


Rebirth

by eva7673



Series: Rebirth Series [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Origin Story, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eva7673/pseuds/eva7673
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When 21 year old agent Clint Barton stumbles into the middle of a war between S.H.E.I.L.D and a Russian underground organisation, the last thing he expected was to make a call that left him walking away with a certain red-head and more questions than he started with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Ran Away In Floods Of Shame

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been considering delving into the author side of fan-fiction and AO3 for a while now, after many years of avid reading, and finally I am ready to post my first multi-chapter story….so please be gentle with me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When 21 year old agent Clint Barton stumbles into the middle of a war between S.H.E.I.L.D and a Russian underground organisation, the last thing he expected was to make a call that left him walking away with a certain red-head and more questions than he started with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been considering delving into the author side of fan-fiction and AO3 for a while now, after many years of avid reading, and finally I am ready to post my first multi-chapter story….so please be gentle with me.

"We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin." - Andre Berthiaume

* * *

"This last guy though – it was like he didn't even know what was happening." Clint sat, with his feet propped up on the co-pilot's consul, across from Phil, while he spoke, arms waving about to add dramatic effect. "Had his brief case cradled against his chest like a shield while he argued with me – he bloody  _argued_  with me Phil – kept saying that he hadn't done anything wrong. That he was just a businessman. And I told him that while arms dealing is technically a ' _business_ ' I didn't think him selling guns to children counted as ' _doing nothing wrong'_." Clint chuckled openly, miming quotation marks with growing enthusiasm as the story went on. "Seriously, if he weren't a sadistic warlord, I might have almost felt bad for the guy. He was legitimately shocked that S.H.I.E.L.D had come for him – didn't have any security or nothing. Just stood there with shaking knees throwing money at me. Real money too – had handfuls of it in his pockets. Clearly no one ever told him-"

Phil listened with quiet amusement to Clint's latest recap, typing his own mission report swiftly, and every so often swatting Clint's feet from the consul only to find them returned the second his attention wavered. The man wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D's finest – and most demanded – operative for nothing. In fact, in the three years since Phil had brought Clint into S.H.I.E.L.D, the kid had become nothing short of a legion. Albeit a mostly disliked and widely ostracised legion, but one none the less. His animosity with other agents was mainly due to his dangerous, cold, persona – a by-product of his time as a contract assassin that left majority of the organisation constantly weary of him – but Phil secretly believed that Clint enjoyed the strained relationship. He wasn't the type to become attached, and seemed to hate people becoming attached to him even more.

The thought had Phil's eyes flicking upwards from his computer screen to watch his agent as he continued the apparently 'epic tale' of his latest assignment. Phil couldn't help as his smile grew at the good-natured humour in Clint's eyes, the relaxed set to his shoulders.

Clint Barton was an enigma, there was no doubt about that. An enigma that had seen too much, suffered more than any should, in his few years. But in the time since Phil had brought him to S.H.I.E.L.D Phil had broken through the walls that surrounded his agent. Been allowed close enough to see what Clint refused to expose to others.

And he had never been more glad that he had placed so much blind faith in the kid, because as those walls fell one by one Phil realised that Clint had deserved that faith more than anyone else ever could have.

The kid was broken, torn apart by the cruel hand life had dealt him, but Phil came to see as the years went by – and the duo ended up in more than their fair share of tight spots – that somehow what the kid had witnessed and done hadn't ruined him. Hadn't broken him beyond repair. No, instead Clint had merely retreated within himself. Buried his kind-hearted and devoted nature beneath layers upon layers of self-loathing.

But Phil had found that true nature. He had witnessed the kindness, been on the receiving end of that devotion, and now there was no way he was willing to let that person go. Let him slip away, hidden behind Clint's hatred of himself. Hatred of his past, of the decisions he had made to survive. Phil had finally managed to wrench him from the destructive mindset that had threatened to cripple him when he first came to S.H.I.E.L.D, and Clint had begun trusting him to do so.

A brotherhood had formed between the two of them that Phil doubted he could live without now. Somewhere along the line, between the disastrous missions that had required more trust than Clint knew he had and the moments of silent comradely, Clint had begun to mean more to him than any other agent before. Mean more than anyone else in Phil's entire life. Clint had become his brother in many ways.

His son.

An incredibly rude, sarcastic and often downright infuriating son.

"-Well your recollection of this job seems just about perfect." Phil cut Clint off mid-sentence as he was describing the explosion of the compound with a series of flailing arms and machine gun impressions, "You should have no trouble with the report this time around."

The flailing arms halted immediately before an expression of almost believable sincerity contorted his features. "Oh I don't think so, I was heavily concussed." He said with a shrug. "And a concussed recollected is unreliable. I would never compromise S.H.I.E.L.D like that."

Phil had regrated telling him that particular protocol from day one.

"Concussed?" Phil questioned tonelessly, barely hiding his amusement at the twenty-one year old. Clint's expression remained absolutely heart-broken, as if the idea of not being able to complete his paperwork was nothing short of devastating. "I don't remember you reporting any kind of injury, head related or not?"

"I must have forgotten to mention it." He argued, a grin breaking through that distraught expression, "Concussion's can do that to a person."

"Mhmm." Phil murmured sending his own mission report through to be logged, having already explained that a report that one from Clint would not be accompanying it before the two had even begun bickering. When it came to mission reports Clint could always be counted on to come up with some kind of excuse to spare himself the hassle of writing a single word. Even if said excuse required purposeful bodily harm. Phil had managed, after much frustration and rigorous yelling matches, to persuade the kid from such extremes. Instead now he merely made Clint's excuses up on his own and passed them along. Even Fury had stopped asking for reports from Clint after a disastrous mission in Sao Paulo that Clint had described in his written statement as the result of 'a clusterfuck of shitfaces who wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between their own assholes and the bomb they were attempting to build'.

"We're set to land in ten." Phil said as he begun to pack away his computer.

Clint sighed heavily before heaving himself out of the co-pilot's seat and making a beeline for the back of the quin jet where his equipment lay, strewn across the floor "I'd better go see if I can somehow shove all my shit back into that bag." He said. "Here's hoping we might actually get some downtime after this one, cause if I don't get a chance to wash some of the clothes in here we're going to be able to start selling them off as toxic weapons." He brought a particularly crumpled shirt up to his nose as Phil watched and sniffed it before repelling immediately and shoving it as far down in his rucksack as it would go.

The two of them had barely seen the New York base at all this year, and perhaps even less last year. Clint's position as S.H.I.E.L.D's most valuable asset was certainly a tittle to be proud of, but it did result in him being in almost constant demand. The kid had had only three weeks of rest in the last twelve months, and even that had only come about after he got himself shot in South Africa.

"We have nothing lined up so we might get a few days if we're lucky." Phil said turning his attention back to the descending quin jet while also trying to block out the image of his own sweat-laden belongings.

Yes. Some downtime was definitely needed.

* * *

Clint had never thought of himself as a particularly lucky man.

And today was apparently no exception.

No sooner had he and Phil arrived on base than Fury's second in command was striding towards them on the tarmac – beckoning them over with a stiff flick of her hand.

"You've both been requested in debrief room one," Clint was still unsure as to his opinion of Agent Hill. Her sharpness and completely dedication to S.H.I.E.L.D protocall often left him resenting her as she ordered him about relentlessly, but he couldn't deny that he admired her a little. There were not many people on earth who could demand absolute compliance like Agent Hill. That didn't mean that he didn't attempt random spouts of insubordination just to keep her on her toes, but that was neither here nor there. He respected her ability to scare most agents shitless, even if her detached – and seemingly infinite – orders annoyed him to no end.

"That shouldn't be right." Phil said, ever polite, but firm. "We should have at least three days scheduled downtime. It was approved weeks ago. We've already postponed Clint's bi-annual med-check twice now and after what happened in South Africa he should really have already-"

"-Someone blew away half of the Swedish Consulate in Berlin."

Clint's eyebrows shot up and he exchanged an incredulous look with Phil. This was one of those times that the respect for Hill overcame his resentment. He didn't know if he'd be able to deliver that line with even half of the sass, somehow hidden within the detached professionalism, which she managed in those few words. "You've both been requested in debriefing room one." She repeated before turning and retreating from them swiftly.

Yeah. Luck was so not his thing.

The debriefing room was nothing short of bursting by the time Clint and Phil squeezed through the double doors. It was by far the largest of the debriefing rooms, usually reserved for large team missions, and not somewhere that Clint had spent a lot of time personally.

He was not a 'team' kind of person.

He got the impression however that his aversion to large groups of agents was going to be rigorously ignored on whatever this mission was going to be as tac-teams already stood about the room, briefing packets in the hands, talking to one another and comparing various notes.  _Great_ , he thought,  _just how I wanted to spend the next few days. Trapped on an assignment with scores of agents with something to prove_. And they always had something to prove. Perhaps it was his obvious youth – barely eighteen when he joined the organisation, and only twenty-one now – or his unbeaten score at the training range, but for some unbeknownst reason to Clint whenever he worked with others his missions tended to go more side-ways than usual due to egotistical agents with  _something to fucking prove_.

Or perhaps Phil was right.

His inability to trust them in the field led them to rash action.

But that wasn't his fault. He was of the opinion that if they make stupid decisions in the field, they would have made them with or without his presence. And his shunning them only ensured that he wasn't a casualty of those stupid decisions.

Phil hadn't bothered to argue the backwards logic. He had merely rolled his eyes and assured Clint that it was unlikely to become a problem very often as he was to be assigned as a solo-operative nine times out of ten.

This was apparently to become his one out of ten mission for the year.

Clint was dreading it already.

The sight of Fury sweeping into the room pushed his irritation to the back of his mind and within the few short seconds it took the one eyed man to reach the front of the room a silence fell among its entire inhabitants.

"This morning the entire north side of the Swedish Consulate in downtown Berlin was attacked, and eventually destroyed through the use of explosives along with half a street corner. As of now we are unsure which diplomats were the intended targets of the attack – or if it was a focused attack at all." He paused and seemed to take in every agent in the room separately. "The purpose of the attack however, no matter how crucial now, is in the long run irrelevant. This was a Consulate. A protected and incredibly vital aspect of foreign alliance." Again he paused. When he spoke again his voice had lowered and there was an unmistakable threat attached to each word. "There is a reason that terrorist's don't target Consulates." His stare seemed to heat with each word. "Let's remind them of it."

With that the Director swept from the room as swiftly as he had entered it, a trail of agents scurrying along behind him all no doubt speaking over each other as they received more updates on the situation. He paused in the doorway, however, and with undeniable authority beckoned both Phil and Clint to follow him before disappearing. Both did so without hesitation, trailing him all the way to his office doors, hanging back as the scurrying agents continued to speak over each other.

Phil was paying rapt attention to the word's of the agents, trying to piece together as much as he could, while Clint attempted to conceal his sluggish attempts to keep pace with the group. It had been days since he had last slept. Weeks since he had slept all through the night.

Deep down he knew he should have told Phil that the dreams were back, but he just couldn't bring himself to. The man looked just as exhausted as Clint lately.

After a debacle in North Korea a little over eight months ago, one that had resulted in a national incident – which Clint claimed was not  _entirely_  his fault – Fury had begun assigning the agent and his handler every mission under the sun. His argument had been that if Clint believed himself to be such a superior agent that he didn't need the tac teams Fury sent in to ensure that national incidents _didn't_  happen, he could handle half of S.H.I.E.L.D's jobs personally.

When the director had first said it Clint had thought he was joking.

He wasn't.

Now, after eight months of continuous jobs, Clint was almost ready to throw himself at the man's feet and beg for forgiveness. Beg for even one damn night off.

As was the pattern, ever since he was a child, the lack of sleep caused by the continuous missions had brought on a fresh round of nightmares that left Clint awake, shivering and feverish during the early hours of the morning. His days as a contract assassin were memories that had the ability to gut him more painfully than any blade, and while he slept the defences he kept rigidly in place against those memories were gone. He was vulnerable. And every night those dreams damn near ended him.

Yet, he still didn't wake Phil.

He knew he should. That the man would blow a gasket if he found out that Clint had been letting him sleep peacefully through the night while he sat up, head between his knees, fighting for composure. Letting himself stew in the memories that threatened to drown him.

When he had first come to S.H.E.I.L.D they almost had.

After being accosted by agents, after barely eighteen months of being a gun-for-hire, and unceremoniously thrown into one of S.H.E.I.L.D's more notorious prisons, Clint had first met Phil through the iron bars of a cell. A cell that he would have been locked in for a  _very_  long time had it not been for his handlers insistence that Clint had the potential to be the best operative the organisation had seen in years.

And while at first he had been cautious of the entire group – and their motives – he soon realized that not only did he have the ability to make up for his past mistakes, but he had also found a place within which he felt he fit perfectly. Or at least, as perfectly as anyone like him ever could. Of course there was animosity with other agents, but Clint had never been the most social of people, and he blatantly ignored most superiors. Well, at least the superiors he didn't outright resent. Those he took satisfaction in tormenting mercilessly.

So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he fit perfectly in place beside Phil.

In the three years that Clint had been with S.H.E.I.L.D he had found within Phil something that he was sure he lost years ago. A brother.

It had taken time – and some particularly sticky situations – but eventually Clint hadn't been able to keep the man at arms length any longer. He was just too damn insistent.

_Sleep Clint._

_Eat Clint._

_You can't go for a run with a barely stitched together femoral artery Clint._

It had been downright infuriating to begin with. Clint, who had become self sufficient from the age of seven by necessity, hadn't been able to stand Phil's near constant 'check ins' and help.

When he had finally snapped and told Phil this – well screamed it – Phil hadn't even looked taken aback. Instead it was Clint who was left flabbergasted by his reply.

 _It's my job to take care of you Clint._  He had said with more sincerity than Clint had heard in his entire life. _As your handler it's my job to make sure that you're healthy. Make sure that you're safe._ That would have been enough to shut Clint up at the time – but Phil wasn't known for pulling his punches when it came to Clint.

Especially not when Clint questioned the trust that had been forged between them.

 _And as your friend, it's my job to make sure that you're happy_.

And dammit the man had more than succeed. These last few years with Phil, working for S.H.E.I.L.D had been the best of his life. He no longer felt lost or without purpose. Here, he was helping people. Making up for the sins of his past and re-building himself to be better. Someone that he might one day be proud to be.

If he could only  _sleep_.

He almost ran right into Phil as the group of agents hovered around Fury at the door of his office, all fighting to get in the last word before he turned to face them with a stony expression.

Well as stony as a spy with only one eye could get.

"Monitor the situation closely. If any leads come up I want them documented and fully explored. Agents Coulson and Barton will be needing a jet fuelled and aimed at Berlin as soon as they leave this office, so call through to the hanger." Fury pushed open the door to his office and Phil stepped through immediately, Clint on his heels. Fury followed them in, calling over his shoulder as he did, "Unless something else explodes, I do not want to be disturbed for the next hour. If you have requests or queries take them to Agent Hill."

With that he slammed the door behind him and turned to face the two men.

"This was so not what I wanted to deal with today." He growled, stalking towards his desk and taking a seat behind it.

"Do we have any idea what happened?" Phil began immediately. "I assume it didn't just spontaneously combust."

"Honestly Phil, we've got no goddamn clue." Fury seemed to be caught somewhere between immense frustration and resignation. "No one has taken responsibility for it yet, which is saying something as usually terrorist cells are tripping over each other to get the glory. As of yet not even one group has so much as stuck their heads out of the sand in Berlin, let alone claimed responsibly."

"Maybe it was an accident." Clint commented dryly. He blamed sleep deprivation for his lack of control over his mouth. Though if he was being honest, sleep or no sleep, control over his tongue had never really been something he mastered.

"Oh yes." Fury responded almost immediately in the same, dry, tone. "I'm sure someone  _accidently_  set off an explosive within one of the most heavily guarded buildings in Berlin." The phone on his desk began ringing, but he didn't even spare it a glance before he went on. "An explosive, mind you, that took out an entire street block." The phone continued to ring.

"Is that Lenz?"

Fury looked over to Phil – who was staring at the now silent phone – with so much pent up exasperation and annoyance in his one, good eye that Clint was sure it was about to burst from the socket. "It just  _had_  to be Germany." With no more explanation than that Fury turned his attention back to Clint. "Look, Barton you're still so high on my shit-list after North Korea that you should be suffering oxygen deficiency, but I need you on this one. The other teams are being sent in as clean up and containment. You two are going hunting. I need a detailed assessment of  _whoever_  or  _whatever_  was responsible for this." His expression darkened significantly. "And then I need them eliminated. By any means necessary."

The phone began ringing once more and, if possible, the frustration in Fury's voice reached an entirely new level. Faster than Clint had ever seen the man move Fury reached across the table, seized the phone and promptly smashed it back down onto the dock – effectively ending the call.

"Though if 'any means necessary' could avoid any further explosions in downtown Berlin, it would be highly appreciated."

"We'll get it done, sir." Phil assured him, grabbing a hold of Clint's bicep and leading him towards the door before he could say anything more.

"-and you can cut the  _sir_  crap, Phil." Fury muttered, still glaring at the phone from his chair.

"Right away sir." Phil smirked closing the door behind himself and Clint, though not before they heard the distinct  _crash_  of the phone being shattered and even more muttering.

"Who's Lenz?" Clint asked at once, turning to Phil who was leading to way down to the hanger.

"German Ambassador to S.H.E.I.L.D."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "Why do I get the feeling there is a story behind Fury's reaction to this."

"No story needed." Phil glanced at him as they both boarded the elevator at the end of the hall and pressed the bottom that would take them to the hanger on the ground level. "When you meet him, you'll understand."

* * *

"It's too late." Clint said, sorrow dripping from each word as he stared down at the chaos below him. "There is nothing I can do." He shook his head slowly in resignation, as if trying to process the monstrosity before him. "Not even acid could dissolve the stench now."

He had a fistful of his clothing held up in one hand for Phil to see from his own bunk. They were so badly scrunched and creased that Phil was having a hard time discerning what exactly they were, pants or shirts.

And dear god, the smell.

"Throw them away." Phil demanded, turning back to his own bag. His clothes weren't quite in the state the Clint's were, but it wouldn't be long. Damn. "We'll get some more when we go out, and I'll file for some more S.H.E.I.L.D issue stuff." They had really needed the break he had set up, but because the universe had it out for the kid – or so Clint claimed – and the national disasters seemed to occur just when he and his agent  _most_  needed some downtime.

"Great." He heard Clint mutter, heaving his entire rucksack into his arms before dumping its entire contents into the large, stone fireplace between both of their cribs. " _Shopping_."

The Berlin safe house was one of the best in Phil's opinion. With its high ceilings and engraved fire places the apartment was much better than the typical one room shacks that he and Clint had found themselves in over the last eight months.

They had arrived in Berlin barely an hour ago, clearing the base within twenty minutes before setting up here. Hopefully this wouldn't take too long and the two of them could be back on base before the end of the week. There can't be too many terrorist cells that would want to blow up a Swedish Consulate.

He finished pulling out the last of his gear and laying it on the cot before turning back to Clint, about to suggest heading off to the sight to see if they could find anything that might clarifying the situation, but the look on his agent's face stopped him. The kid was staring blindly at the clothes he discarded left in the lit fireplace with a vacant expression from where he sat at the end of his own cot. Anxiety immediately rose up in Phil's chest. Vacant was not a word Phil would have typically used to described Clint's most common expressions, guarded or sarcastic perhaps, but not definitely not vacant. The kid's thoughts were usually too active, so much so that he rarely took a moment to himself. To unwind.

Phil knew why though, even though the answer gnawed at him.

Clint didn't like to dwell on himself. Dwell on his memories.

"Clint?" Phil called from across the room only to receive no response. Dropping his things he moved, slowly. Phil had found that approaching Clint when he was zoned out was very similar to approaching a wild animal. Slowly was always best if you didn't want to startle him and lose a limb. "You alright."  
His eyes snapped up. It took them longer than Phil would have liked to focus, sweeping around the room warily, before he meet Phil's own. "Yeah. I'm good." Had his voice sounded that bad this morning? "Really." He insisted noticing Phil's raised brow and general worried stance and waving a calming hand. "I'm just tired. Haven't had a second to sit down in the last couple of days."

"If you're not up for this-"

"I am."

"You're  _human_  Clint." Phil reminded him gently. It was true. The kid hadn't had an hour to relax in the last week and he was starting to look like he might crash any minute. "You need a break every so often, and you haven't been getting one."

"I'll take a break." He agreed easily, much to Phil's surprise and suspicion. "When we're through here." That sounded more like him, forever putting the mission before himself. As his handler Phil couldn't have asked for more, but as someone who genuinely carded about his well being it tended to frustrate him more. Clint smirked, sensing Phil's displeasure and attempting to lighten the mood. "Sure it's not you who needs the break, old man."

"You watch who you're calling old." Phil chided playfully as Clint rose swiftly and disappeared through the bedroom door, no doubt to collect his gear and head down to the car outside. "Damn kid."

* * *

"Shit. They weren't kidding when they said that it wasn't a  _small_  explosion, were they?" Clint had arrived at the scene of the explosion with Phil to find that the explosion had indeed taken out half a street block. Thankfully, as it was the local retail sector of town and the explosion had gone off a little after midnight, there had been no civilian casualties. The buildings surrounding the consulate however, had not been so lucky. 'Rubble' seemed too lenient a term.

Little fires were still burning every few feet, and the north side of the consulate itself had been almost obliterated. Clint was stumbling across what was left of it, keeping a wide birth between himself and the scores of agents that had flooded the scene, sorting through the ashes and bricks. The sun was still yet to rise but the light from small fires combined with the flashing lights of emergency vehicles kept the area well lit.

"Watch where you step." Phil called to him from where he stood with a group of other agents. "Place looks like it might collapse any minute."

"Uh, Phil." Clint called back, smirking as he glanced around the wreckage. "I'm fairly sure that warning's a few hours too late."

Clint could sense the eye-role the comment earned him without even turning around.

"You know what I mean. The  _rest_  of it."

"Aye, aye overwatch."

Clint went on, scanning the wreckage for anything that might enlighten him as to what went down, but so far there was nothing. They hadn't even found a single piece of the bomb either, which in itself was strange. Not a single thing out of the ordinary within the rubble.

Sighing he leaped across a particularly large pile of stone before jogging along the rim of another large creator behind it. He was just about to vault over another pile of stones when something silver caught his eye, buried just beneath his feet. Stepping back he lent down to get a better look at it.

It was a brief case.

Kneeling down he attempted to wrench it from the stone that encased it until it came tumbling free several frustrating minutes later, along with the rock formation that had settled on top of it. Stumbling a little he managed to avoid falling into the creator below with the freed rubble, but held onto the brief case firmly. Hoisting it up he set about trying to open it, with little luck, until movement in his from beside him caught his eye.

The first thing he noticed was her hair.

So fiery red that he almost mistook it for the flames just behind her.

She, too, was sorting through the rubble methodically – occasionally reaching down to examine something more closely before throwing it away. Dressed head to toe in black he doubted that he would have noticed her at all if it weren't for her hair.

"Clint!" Phil's voice called over the wreckage, flashlights streaming over the edge of the creator. "You down there?"

Her head snapped up to him, as if she knew exactly where he was, and his eyes met the most startling green pair he had ever seen.

And then she was gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!


	2. I'll Never Tell How Close I Came

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “-Is there a redhead?”  
> That silenced Phil for a moment. “What?”  
> “A redhead.” Clint repeated eerily calmly. “Woman. About 5’3”.” He continued, before adding as an afterthought, “Attractive.”  
> The furious typing continued before Phil’s apprehensive voice echoed in his ear. “Yes.” He said cautiously. “She came in about two minutes after Yozhikov. How did you-”  
> “I’m staring at her.”  
> And he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, the next chapter! The whole story is written and ready to go so I will be updating every night until all eight chapters are up. I'm nice like that :)  
> Without further ado here is the second chapter!

"The greatest hazard in life, loosing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all." - Søren Kierkegaard

* * *

"Clint?"

The sudden hand on his shoulder almost had him jumping out of his skin, as it was he flinched so hard that he nearly toppled into the pit beside him, but the hand that clenched around his bicep steadied him.

"Hey, hey. You alright?"

Damn. He must be more exhausted than he thought.

Phil was grasping his arm and staring at him. Worry growing in his eyes the longer Clint remained silent.

"I'm fine." Clint shrugged him off before looking down back into the creator. The woman was nowhere to be seen. He even went as far as to lean over the creator further, scope the remaining ruins more clearly, but he couldn't catch a glint of fiery red hair.

"I thought I saw-" He looked back to Phil and the words died on his lips. Damn he was tired. And Phil could see it. He didn't need to give the man any more reason to think he was loosing it. "Never mind. I found this," he held up the case in his arms, if only to make Phil's gaze drop from his own eyes. "Was buried among the rubble, looks locked though."

"We'll take it back with us. Get someone to pry it open, but it's probably nothing. This was a Consulate. They would have had plenty of important documents in locked cases."

"Yeah. Probably." Clint couldn't help himself, he threw another look around him in search of the woman. He could almost  _feel_  her watching him for some reason. And his gut was rarely wrong.

"You sure you saw nothing else?" Damn Phil could read him like a book these days, and the man's concerned eyes made it even harder to lie to him.

Thankfully, he didn't have to try.

"What's going on here? What have you found?"

If it were possible for a voice could ooze bureaucracy and privilege, this one would have been chocking on it. A dumpy man with gelled hair and a suit that Clint was willing to bet cost more than the contents of his rucksack –  _before_  it became putrid – came stumbling down the side of the creator to meet them. Other agents, who had finally made their way over, followed the man at a distance.

As he got closer Clint could make out his scrunched face and pink tinge as he spoke. He couldn't tell, however, if that was merely due to the stress of the situation and the dim fire light or if it was merely the man's natural complexion.

The quiet, frustrated sigh that Phil let slip as he turned to face the man wearily was enough to set Clint's teeth on edge. Any man that brought out frustration in  _Phil_ was someone he was willing to bet his bow on that he'd dislike.

"Mr Lenz-" Phil began pacifyingly, only to be rudely cut off.

"What is that?" He asked at once, nodding towards the brief case in Clint's hands. "Did you find that here? Is it linked to what happened?"

"Considering we haven't opened it yet, I'm not sure." Phil said.

"If it's documents that belong to the Consulate you have no business opening it. You will have to hand it over to the German Governme-"

"What part of  _we haven't opened it_  was difficult part?" Clint asked dryly. "We don't know if it's official documents, terrorist secrets or a Phil's vintage Captain America card set." He pushed the case into Phil's arms, smirking at the frown and matching hint of embarrassment on his handlers face. "Admit it, you keep them in a locked case just like it, don't you?"

Phil ignored him.

"Mr Lenz, until every possible piece of evidence from the scene is examined S.H.E.I.L.D will not be handing over anything. If the case is indeed harmless, Consulate documents, then they willed be returned to the correct party." Clint didn't miss the tightening of the man's – Lenz – face as Phil spoke. He clearly wasn't used to receiving orders.

And it was even clearer how little he enjoyed it.

"Now, if you would please remove yourself from the premises – it is an active crime scene and therefore restricted to only  _necessary_  personnel – I will schedule an appointment with you later in the day to discuss where we stand and where S.H.E.I.L.D will head from here-" The man opened his mouth to argue again, growing redder with anger by the second – Clint was beginning to suspect it wasn't the fire's light, just the man's unfortunate complexion – but this time Phil cut him off before he could get a word out. "-Agent Mitchel will escort you out." Phil nodded at a nearby agent who moved forwards and all but dragged Lenz away, copping an earful as he did so.

Clint thought back to Fury's reaction to the continuous phone calls. How the frustration in his eye had almost rivalled the times he argued with Clint, who would openly admit that he could be an annoying little bastard when irritated.

"I get it now." He said, watching Lenz be pulled out off the scene.

"Thought you might."

* * *

"This is Arkady Yozhikov."

Phil stood at the front of the briefing room, pointing to an image of Yozhikov on the large screen behind him as agents flocked about and Clint watched from his perch in the darkest corner of the room. As out of sight as possible in the hopes that if the Berlin superiors couldn't see him they would ask him for  _another_  update. It would be the forth one in three hours.

And he hadn't even left the base yet.

Clint had discovered in the last few days that the Berlin S.H.E.I.L.D base was almost identical to the New York base on the inside. A couple of times he had forgotten that he was here at all and started to head for his own room before he remembered.

But all S.H.E.I.L.D bases tended to be like that.

And his vagueness was probably just the result of the sleep deprivation that had only gotten worse since they arrived.

"Footage of him entering the Consulate was discovered late last night, and as he is neither on the fatality list or accounted for, and had no business in the Consulate to begin with, he is now one of our top suspects." Phil continued. "He is – as far as we can prove – a Russian business man with contacts all throughout Europe, but S.H.E.I.L.D has been keeping a close eye on his for some time. Suspicions of his connection with certain Russian syndicates have kept him on our watch lists. Lets find out if he belongs there. I want to know everything about him by the end of the day, and most of all I want to know where he is." Various nods throughout the room met Phil's words. "Dismissed."

After handing out various folders and speaking privately with multiple troop leaders, Phil headed in Clint's direction, eyes scanning the crowd for a hint of him.

"Nice motivational speech." Clint called out quietly just as Phil was about to pass his dark corner by, causing the older man to spin wildly for a moment before his eyes landed on Clint's smirk.

"Damn. I almost didn't see you there."

"I know. Must be a bulb out or something." Clint grinned. "Couldn't help myself."

"Of course not." Phil replied dryly but with an affectionate glance in Clint's direction as the agent scanned the room. Dark corners were just so  _Clint_.

Phil too scanned the quickly emptying room before his eyes landed on the image of Yozhikov that was still occupying the large screen. Truth was they still had nothing to go on. Yozhikov was the only puzzle piece even remotely out of place, and to be honest there was a large chance that that was a coincidence. Yozhikov was a shady businessman without a doubt, but he'd never resorted to anything even close to explosives. And that was what was doing Phil's head in.

There was not a single person in, or around, the consulate with a reason to bomb it. Not to mention the security that would have made it close to impossible.

Clint, as he so often did, seemed to read Phil's thoughts. "Something's off with this one." He murmured as they both stared at the image of Yozhikov, and Phil nodded.

They were both silent for a moment, as if by just staring at the small amount of evidence they had managed to gather they might solve whatever it was that was bothering the both of them about the explosion.

Unfortunately, however, several minutes of silence later the only thing they had discovered was a new level of frustration.

"Hunting time?" Clint proposed with one last scowl at the screen.

"Hunting time."

* * *

"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

Clint had been perched on his stomach, looking through the scope of his riffle, on the roof of the building across from the bombsite for almost five hours.

And not even the dust had moved.

"I know, but honestly there isn't much else we can do right now." Phil's voice replied through his earpiece, his frustration evident. "The Base is handling Yozhikov, and as of yet we have nothing else."

There was a moment of silence before Clint replied. "Oh, I wouldn't say  _nothing_."

"You have something." Phil's tone lost its sluggish edge as eagerness took hold.

"Yeah." Another longer paused followed. "A cramp. Everywhere."

Clint could almost sense the irritated eye-roll despite the 10 miles between them. "Duly noted, Hawkeye." That frustration was back. "Do you have anything to report _about the bombsite_?"

"Nope."

"Wonderful."

"Honestly what are you expecting to find, the bomber stumbling about in the ruins proclaiming his evil-ness? That only happens in movies, Over-watch. Bad ones."

"I'm aware, but right now we have nothing-"

"-Else to go on, yeah, yeah." Clint finished for him with an eye roll of his own. "Does that mean we can swap places for a while, and I can lounge about in the safe-house while you freeze your ass off up here? Even your abysmal marksmanship will be able to handle the dust that  _almost_  moved just then." Clint snickered, scratching an itch on the side of his face with the scope of his riffle and flexing his numbing fingers. It just had to be November. Was it too much to ask for terrorists to blow things up, and be mischievous, during the summer months? July or August maybe? Then at least he could enjoy the sunshine while he lay on a rooftop for hours on end staring at dust.

He almost told Phil this before realizing that his handler had never responded to his last jib. Usually the man humoured Clint's bored ramblings for as long as Clint could continue to ramble, answering each playful jab with an appropriate amount of dry sarcasm and insinuated eye rolls.

But he had fallen silent.

"Overwatch?" Clint called into his comm.

There was no reply.

Clint's heart found its way into his throat fasting than he thought possible. He pulled away from the riffle that was leant against the ledge of the roof, facing the ruins of the Consulate across the street, to rest on his toes with one hand against his comm.

"Overwatch?!" He called more urgently, fear beginning to grip him. "Answer me!" He could still hear the  _almost_  indistinguishable buzzing sound that the small devices made, meaning that they had not shorted or been broken in any way. Phil was just not answering him. And Phil  _always_  answered him.

Unless he couldn't.

"OVERWATCH!" Clint tried one last time, reaching back towards his riffle, ready to dismantle it and run. Run all the way back to the safe house if he had too, but before he could even unscrew the scope from the barrel Phil's voice filled his ears.

"It wasn't Yozhikov."

Clint dropped his head in relief to the concrete roof with a thud, his heart rate returning to normal while adrenaline still coursed through his veins like wildfire.

" _Dammit Overwatch_!"

"-sorry I just had to check something." Phil spoke hastily, and Clint could hear that sound of him rustling through files agitatedly. "And I was right. It wasn't Yozhikov." He repeated.

"What the hell do you mean?"

"I was going through footage of him in the Consulate," Phil began, a new edge to his voice. "Watching him, when I found the footage of him actually entering."

"So? How is that important? We already knew he was inside when he wasn't meant to be?" Clint said, his frustration growing.

"We did, but that's not what's important. It's  _how_  he entered-"

"Bloody spit it out, Overwatch!" Clint demanded.

"He was paranoid."

That caught Clint off-guard, and rendered him if possible even more confused. "What?"

"When he came into the Consulate, he was paranoid. He was throwing looks over his shoulder and agitated." Phil explained.

"I'd be paranoid too if I were going to set off a bomb in a consulate." Clint reasoned.

"That's the strange part. There is footage of him at a café not even three blocks away, minutes before he entered the consulate, and he looks completely at ease. Not a care in the world." Phil argued, the rustling continuing in the background. "I think he was being followed. I don't think he was the bomber, I think he was-"

"-the target." Clint finished.

"Exactly."  
"Strange way to kill someone though?" Clint deliberated, returning somewhat reluctantly to his position on the roof, looking down the range of his scope at the ruins. "Blow up the building they just  _happen_  to run into. If it was an assassination, it was a pretty dodgy one. He lived."

There was another pause while the rustling continued at a new level, and Clint could hear Phil muttering to himself, until everything halted and there was silence for a few moments.

"I'm sending you something." Phil said just as Clint's phone buzzed lightly in his recently purchased combat pants. "Yozhikov has a brief case in the footage of him entering the consulate, but he didn't come out of the building with one, and he didn't report one missing. I need to know if it's the same one you found last night?"

"Might be hard to tell," Clint said as he pulled the phone from his pocket. "It looked like a pretty ordinary brief-case to me. Like you said last night, there were probably hundreds of them in the building when it got blown to hell."

"You can't remember anything defining about it?"

"Silver and locked."

"Very useful." The dry sarcasm was back. "Still once we get it opened we should be able to tell if it was his. Consulate files would all be marked with consulate seals, so if it is his-"

"It is his." Clint cut him off, staring at the photo of Yozhikov entering the Consulate on his screen. "That's the brief case."

"What?!" It was Phil's turn to be completely lost. "Are you sure? How can you tell-"

"-there's blood on the corner." And then was. A tiny speck of it that Clint himself had almost missed while examining the photo. "There was dried blood on the case I found too, in exactly the same place. I had just assumed it was from the explosion." And to be honest he had been a little distracted when he first found it. Arrogant diplomats and mysterious redheads taking up too much of his attention. "But if there was blood on it  _before_  he got to the consulate then he must have been in a fight before hand."

"And whoever attacked him probably followed him inside." Phil continued, and the sound of vigorous typing could be heard over the comm. "Trouble is there are hundreds of people in that foyer. It could be any of them. I can run all the faces through the data-bank but there's no guarantee that whoever it was is even in the data-bank. And if not then-"

"-Is there a redhead?"

That silenced Phil for a moment. "What?"

"A redhead." Clint repeated eerily calmly. "Woman. About 5'3"." He continued, before adding as an afterthought, "Attractive."

The furious typing continued before Phil's apprehensive voice echoed in his ear. "Yes." He said cautiously. "She came in about two minutes after Yozhikov. How did you-"

"I'm staring at her."

And he was.

There she was again, rumbling through the ruins, just as she had been last night when Clint spotted her. She hadn't even changed her clothes. In fact, Clint realized as he stared at her through his scope, she appeared even  _more_  bloody than she had the night before. Still she moved so gracefully and quickly that, if not for her startling hair, Clint's eyes might have missed her altogether. As it was he could barely make her out amongst the rubble. She knew how to hide herself well, but now that he had caught sight of her he managed to follow her progress through the ruins. Watch her stop every now and again before moving on.

She was searching for something.

And Clint had a feeling he knew what it was.

"-HAWKEYE!" Phil was yelling across the comms, his voice taking on the panic that had seized Clint earlier.

"She's looking for something." Clint said hurriedly, still tracking her progress. "And she looks bad, Overwatch. A couple of fights and an explosion victim, bad."

"You think she's looking for the case?"

"If she followed Yozhikov in for it then it would make sense that she would come back for it. Especially if she's just a gun for hire and the case was her prize." Clint reasoned, barely able to keep track of her as she disappeared behind large pieces of rubble, and reappeared in different places faster than he though possible.

"She looks like a gun for hire." He told Phil, unable to keep the admiration from seeping into his voice. "She's good. I can barely keep track of her."

"Finally met your match huh," Phil rubbed playfully, "Someone faster than even your eyes."

"I said  _barely_  keep track of her." He defended himself haughtily. "She's not going anywhere, Overwatch."

"Send through a photo," Phil said, the sound of vigorous typing filling the comms once more. "If she's that good chances are she's in the data-bank."

It took a few moments to put the scope into camera mode, and several more waiting for her to reappear from behind a particularly large pile of stone that had once been the lobby before he had his shot. It wasn't going to win him any photography prizes but he did manage to snap a slightly blurred picture of her face as she flitted in and out of his sight again.

"She looks young." Clint commented as he waited for Phil to search the photo and the mystery girl to reappear. "Too young almost. We might be wrong. I doubt she's even my age, though I suppose that doesn't mean anything. I was awesome at before I was even legal so-"

"Get out." The order was as clear as it was sharp.

The banter was done.

He'd found something.

"Why? What is it?" Clint questioned even as he began to disassemble his riffle at record speed. He knew that something seemed off with her. Even watching her from across the street the hair on the back of his neck had prickled nervously, and that had only happened around very few people in his life.

None of them good.

"Don't worry about that now, just get out. I have a tac-team on rout and they're going to take her in. Meet them on Köbisstraße street, just behind we you are." Phil's tactical voice was in full force, and again he wondered who the hell she could be to spark that voice so quickly. Phil, the poster-boy for eerie calmness, almost seemed _nervous_. "Trust me," He went on. "They're going to need you."

He almost replied, having packed away his riffle and started towards the door that would lead inside until the sight of a red-head not even three feet from him rendered him – for the first time in his twenty one years – absolutely speechless.

He had dropped the riffle case and reached for the Desert Eagle tucked into the back of his cargo pants in less than a second, but she was already on him, hand wrapping around his own that was reaching for the gun and twisting it in such a way that he had no choice but to follow it, tumbling to the ground in a front salt, to avoid her snapping the bone into several pieces.

He righted himself immediately, swinging a controlled fist behind him and using the momentum to spin himself to face her, but she dodged him as if he were a fly before swatting him the an open palm hard enough to make him to see stars. At the same time her other hand then went to his throat, colliding with his vocal cords and tacking the breath from him in one swift stroke. With one final twirl she hooked an arm under his shoulder while he fought to take in air and flipped him onto the ledge of the roof so that his legs, and majority of his torso, dangled dangerously over the six hundred foot drop to the concrete sidewalk.

The entire attack took less time than it had taken him to even reach for his gun.

_Jesus_  she was fast.

" _Where is it?_ " She demanded in flawless German. " _The case. Where is it?_ "

"Don't know what you're talking about, love." He panted with a half-assed grin. He had never been one to take death threats and torture too seriously, much to Phil's constant chagrin. Or at least show he took them seriously. His anti-interrogation technique had always been his sarcasm. "I'm just up here for the view."

Actually, sarcasm and heated glares where about all that made up his social skills.

It probably wasn't a good technique. He found it usually made his captors want to hit him for the mere satisfaction of hitting him, rather than just information gathering.

Still, he hadn't been killed because of it yet, and in his book that meant it was as successful as any other technique.

Though he had a feeling whoever Miss Murderous-Redhead was, might just end that streak with a six hundred foot drop.

Her grip on him slackened, and for a moment he fell.

Slid between her fingers until only his shoulders remained at roof level and the rest of him hung over the edge. Her unbelievably strong hands caught him just as he was about to fall from the roof top altogether – seizing one of his shoulders with one hand and a handful of his hair with another.  
"I saw you last night." She went on calmly, in perfect English this time. "You had the case. You gave it to the man beside you. Where did he take it?"

"Oh, him." Clint replied lamely, all too aware that he was still slowly slipping through her fingers. "Ugh, who knows? Bit of a wild card he is. Always  _gallivanting_  about, with hookers and booze. You know the type. Could be passed out anywhere in the city by now." He choked out 'gallivanting' – Phil and his personal distress word – with perhaps a little too much vigor, but he was suddenly finding it hard to breath and the cement of the roof's edge cut into his shoulders and pushed against his lungs.

"I can hear you Clint," Phil's voice came over the comm quietly, the anxiety in it at a level that Clint hadn't heard in a while. Not even when he got shot. "We're coming for you. Just hang on. I'm almost there.  _Don't_ engage. Stall her."

That was easier said than done. The woman seemed to be swallowing none of his usual diversion attempts, and he continued to slip through her grasp until the roof's edge was cutting base of his neck and he was staring straight down at the fall below him.

"Last time." She warned evenly. "Or I let you go. Where is it?"

"I  _don't_  know."

It wasn't a lie exactly. He had no idea where they had taken it once he handed it over.

He braced himself for his inevitable release. If he could land  _just_  right have a chance. There was the smallest of ledges just a floor below him and if he could catch himself on it –

It took a moment before he noticed that he hadn't fallen. She hadn't let go.

But neither did she ask him again.

He inched his head upwards, just enough to catch sight on her face above him and noticed that she was no longer concentrating on him. In fact, her brilliantly green eyes were focus on something beyond the rooftop. Watching it with empty eyes.

Had the tac-team arrived?

_Phil?_

He opened his mouth but before he could even think of something to distract her he was wrenched upwards, back onto the safety of the roof, and dump unceremoniously on its concrete floor.

He didn't even make it to his knees before something cold, and shaped very similarly to the butt of his own Desert Eagle, collided with the side of his skull.

And then there was nothing.

* * *

Phil was sure his heart rate had not yet returned to its normal rhythm.

It had been slamming against his ribs faster than he though possible since he first heard the strange woman's voice over Clint's comm. And almost burst from his chest when he sprinted onto the roof where an unresponsive Clint lay with a pool of blood spreading about his head.

Even now, back in the safe house with Clint patched up, sleeping and within reaching distance he still couldn't quite get his heart to stop thundering.

That had been too close.

The few minutes between discovering who exactly was a mere street away from Clint and bursting onto that roof had been a blur of terror that overshadowed any he had felt before.

_God_ , she could have killed him.

The thought had been echoing through his skull since he found Clint. Since he realized that, in fact, she hadn't. Realized that his world hadn't been destroyed then and there.

Because the kid was his world now. He was all Phil had.

Both a brother and a son in every way.

And Phil almost sent him to that rooftop to be slaughtered.

Never once in the time since he had known Clint, trained Clint, had he thought the kid incapable of beating  _anyone_. Not one coach. Not one agent. Clint was a prodigy in almost every way, and Phil knew this perhaps more surely than anyone else in the world. But as soon as his search on the redheaded girl proved fruitful his gut had sunk in a way that it never had before. The knowledge that his agent was nothing more than a twenty one year old that had been forced to grow up too quickly hit him with the force of a bulldozer.

He'd known Clint was going to loose.

The sun had set hours ago while Phil pondered over his files, one eye on his work and another on Clint. The medics had assured Phil that the head wound was nothing more than a pretty nasty concussion, but Phil couldn't help himself.

He should have been dead after all. She  _should_ have killed him. And for the life of him Phil couldn't figure out why she hadn't.

And the nagging question only made his already shot-to-hell nerves worse.

With a sigh he swept his fingers through his tasseled hair for the hundredth time that hour and returned to his file only to throw it away without a thought when a loud groan came from Clint's cot.

"Clint?" He called, kneeling beside the cot, knowing better than to reach out. "Clint? Can you hear me?"

"No." The groggy response triggered a chuckle of relief to escape from Phil's lips as he placed a hand on Clint's shoulder, giving it a gentle shake.

"Come on, I need you to wake up." He ordered calmly.

With several more huffs and an even louder grown Clint's blue eyes emerged from behind their lids and he stared up at Phil – blinking several before he managed to focus on his handler.

"-hat 'appened?" He slurred, struggling to sit up for a moment before Phil reached out and pulled him up gently.

"You don't remember?"

"I remember that I was about to becoming painfully equated with the sidewalk, but after that no." Clint reached up and tentatively touched his left temple only to flinch away when he found the now stitched wound. Phil reached across the grab an ice pack in the med-kit he had left beside the cot and pressing it against Clint's head before he could pull away.

If there was one thing in the world that Clint hated above all others, it was being coddled. And in his mind any kind of medical assistance or routine checkups counted as coddling.

The kid was too self-sufficient for his own good sometimes, outright refusing help from even Phil when he needed it, and usually ending up in a worse state because of it.

Tonight, however, luck was on Phil's side. Clint didn't pull away from the ice pack. Instead he raised a hand so that he could hold it against his skull himself andactually leaned into it.

He was definitely concussed.

"You had a face to face with our newest suspect and lost." Phil explained, moving back to the med-kit in search of some pain relief – already preparing for Clint's inevitable refusal of it and the argument that would incur.

Clint was nodding, although somewhat dizzily. "Pretty redhead." He responded and Phil's brow rose.

"Pretty, huh?"

"Oh, shut up. I'm concussed."

"You sure are," Phil agreed having found the pills and sitting back on the cot, "Take these-" He said, handing them over before continuing at the sight of Clint's annoyance. "No arguments."

For once Clint didn't even bother. His head must really ache.

"So what happened?" Clint went on. "You get her?"

"Nope," Phil sighed. "She clocked you and then took off."

That caused Clint to blink furiously for several more minutes. "She  _took off_? Why the hell didn't she just kill me then?"

After hours of asking himself the same question Phil didn't have an answer to give, so he said nothing.

Clint shook his head, confused and more than a little aggravated.

"Who the  _hell_  was she, Phil?"

Phil reached across to his own cot to gather up the files that he had been looking over before Clint woke and handed them over.

"Her name is Natalia Romanova." Phil said as Clint struggled to focus his eyes on the page before him.

"Never heard of her." Clint frowned.

"Oh, I doubt that." Phil argued tonelessly, causing Clint to look up from Romanova's small file in confusion. "You don't hear her real name too often, the title moves from girl to girl too quickly. Most people just call her the Black Widow."

"Well. Shit."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!
> 
> Please, Please tell me what you think! Reviews are so important - they make us better! And I want everyone to enjoy this story!


	3. Well You Went Left And I Went Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You up for this?"
> 
> The question caught him off guard and he glanced up to meet Phil's eyes that were suddenly staring down at him too closely for his liking.
> 
> "Sure." He said at once. "Why wouldn't I be?"
> 
> At first Phil didn't say anything, just continued to stare, but then he shook his head minutely and the smallest of smiles tugged at his lips. "No reason. You just seem a bit off. But if you say you're fine…"
> 
> "I am."
> 
> Phil was silent for another moment, and Clint's heart shot up into his throat. God, did he know? Clint had purposely been silent while he lay awake at night, equally terrified and ashamed, and unable to sleep. But Phil was, well, Phil. He just knew things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!
> 
> Ta Da! Chapter three! If you're a sucker for bro-feels...like me...you're going to love it.

"Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show." - Jacqueline Susann

* * *

" _Shit_." Clint repeated, mainly to himself, but his handler nodded slowly in agreement. The two of them sat on Clint's cot for a moment while Clint's concussed brain fought to take in the file in front of him. It took longer than it probably should have, even with his head injury, as his eyelids drooped every few seconds in a way that had nothing to do with his concussion and everything to do with his suddenly unbearable exhaustion.

It was as if the hit to the head had destroyed the last bit of stamina he had in him and now it was all he could do not to face plant into the file. All he wanted was to lie back down and sleep for an eternity – but he couldn't. Not with Phil watching. If he found out how exhausted Clint really was he'd have his head.

And his security clearance.

Clint would be sentenced to surveillance details for months if Phil found out that Clint's dreams had come back with a vengeance and he hadn't told him.

Clint's past as a gun for hire was nothing that Phil was unaware of. In fact it was what had landed him on Phil's radar in the first place, and not something that the man had ever held against Clint. Never judged him for despite how harshly Clint judged himself.

 _You were a kid,_  Phil was always remind him – with a compassion that Clint didn't deserve – when Clint spoke of his dreams,  _A kid who had seen to much, been put through too much, and you made the only choice that was left for you. You survived._

But Clint's survival had been at the cost of others.

And lately those others had been plaguing his dreams with such ferocity that he couldn't stand to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time.

When he had first come to S.H.E.I.L.D the nightmares had been so crippling that he had gone weeklong stretches with barely any sleep at all. They had ruled his life for months until he had passed out during one of his training sessions with Phil and woke in the infirmary to find the older man seated in the chair beside his cot.

 _Ready to tell me what's on your mind yet?_  Phil had asked just as calmly as he had asked the exact same question dozens of times before. And so Clint had. Later he blamed exhaustion and the drugs they had pumped him full off, but he had come clean to his handler about what he had done. The lives he had taken.

And when he had finished Phil had merely nodded.

 _I know_. He had said.  _I always knew. There aren't many hit men that use bows nowadays. I pieced together all of your past hits before I even began looking for you. I know how much blood is on your hands. And I accept it. I saw your remorse, how much every life haunts you, the moment we met._

_I saw the man, not the murderer._

_And you are a_ good _man Clint Barton. And one day – when you're ready to forgive yourself for your mistakes – you're going to become_ great _._

Clint was still working on the forgiveness part.

Three years later though and he really hadn't made much progress to be quite honest. And in the last few weeks, as the nightmares made themselves at home in his sleep once more, he felt as if all his work to make himself better had been for nothing. Every life he fought to save over the last three years had been for nothing because some nights he felt no better. No more than the worthless killer he was when he first came to S.H.E.I.L.D.

As if nothing he could do might even begin to wipe away the blood that he had spilt.

And on top of all that, he was lying to Phil about it.

As if he didn't feel shit enough about it already.

"I've already called Fury and he's called a meeting with the Council," Phil said, rising from where he sat at the end of Clint's cot and moving back across the room to his own cot and the files strewn across it. "He should be talking to them about now actually-" he glanced down at his watch. "Odds are though that they're going to issue a hit, and as we're the closest team-" His voice faded away suggestively, but Clint knew what Phil hadn't had to say.

It would be him. They'd assign the kill to him.

"You up for this?"

The question caught him off guard and he glanced up to meet Phil's eyes that were suddenly staring down at him too closely for his liking.

"Sure." He said at once. "Why wouldn't I be?"

At first Phil didn't say anything, just continued to stare, but then he shook his head minutely and the smallest of smiles tugged at his lips. "No reason. You just seem a bit off. But if you say you're fine…"

"I am."

Phil was silent for another moment, and Clint's heart shot up into his throat. God, did he know? Clint had purposely been silent while he lay awake at night, equally terrified and ashamed, and unable to sleep. But Phil was, well,  _Phil_. He just  _knew_  things.

Eventually, though, Phil did reply.

"Okay."

The short, and clearly hesitant, answer didn't help to calm Clint's nerves, but he put them aside for now. He had a job to do, and if Phil were beginning to suspect that he was struggling at it he would have him removed.

And that was  _so_  not happening with a Black Widow in the picture.

He opened his mouth to say something, distract Phil in some way and get his mind back on the case, but the older man cut him off.

"Go back to sleep. That concussion still hasn't worn off and it won't for a while. Not much we can do until Fury gets onto the council and we get more orders. Might as well sleep while we can."

Clint tried his best to school his expression, despite the glance Phil sent him at the mention of sleep. For the most part he succeed, nodding convincingly and laying back onto his cot with his back facing Phil – but despite his efforts, as his handler shot him one last look from his own cot, Phil could easily see the tense set of Clint's shoulders and hear the quiet but fast breathing.

And both remained so for the hours that followed.

* * *

Phil woke just in time to see the sun rise while he set about brewing some coffee before he went over every file in the small safe house  _again_. For the life of him he couldn't find anything that connected the Romanov girl to Yozhikov. Not one single scrap of proof that they had ever come anywhere close to one another, let alone met. Not that there was much to go on when it came to Natalia Romanov. The only records they had of her were the occasional photo and alleged assassinations, and even those were hits that had been credited to her due to suspicion alone. If he only put stock in solid facts about her he wouldn't even have her name, even that was unproven.

The only thing he knew about the girl was that she was dangerous.

And he didn't want Clint within a hundred mile radius of her.

He looked over at the archer whose silhouette was clear through the open door of the adjacent room, and couldn't help but grimace.

The kid had tossed and turned for hours while they both attempted to sleep, and even when Phil had finally drifted off and woken hours later the kid had still been as tense as his bow string.

And Phil was furious.

Not just at Clint, for lying to him – and he had too, the shadows under his eyes sold him out – but also at himself. He should have noticed sooner. Should have seen that the kid was exhausted and distracted. Clearly his dreams were back with a vengeance they hadn't had in years, and for some reason Clint had yet to come with him.

Phil would have been lying if he said that didn't hurt a little. He had thought they were past this. That Clint trusted him.

"I thought you went over all of this last night?" Clint's voice broke Phil's line of thought and he looked up to find a sleepy archer in the doorway of the bedroom. He shuffled across the small dining room that was strewn with Phil's files in the direction of the coffee machine and the mug Phil had already filled with an obscene amount of sugar in anticipation of him waking.

"I did, but as I didn't find anything I thought I might as well look through it all again to be sure. Maybe if I wish hard enough some scrap of proof will magically tie everything together."

Clint huffed, amused, while pouring his coffee. "When has life ever been that kind to us?" Phil sighed bleakly at the truth in those words and Clint went on, moving to the seat across from his handler at the small table. "Anything from our red-head over night?"

"Nothing. Wherever she is, she's laying low for now."

"Probably for the best. Don't know if my skull could take another round with her for a couple of days." Clint rubbed his stiches, looking more irritated than pained which reassured Phil. The concussion must have worn off. "Where are the files on her anyway? Might as well get to know what I'm up against." Clint said, looking over his mug at the array of files on the table.

"You're looking at it," Phil nodding towards the thin folder right under Clint's nose.

The agent looked down. "You're joking, right?" He picked up the file and flipped it open to find a small photograph along with only two other, short, pages detailing hits that she was  _suspected_  to have had a hand in. "This is  _it_? This is all we have? How is that even possible?"

"If you had asked me eight months ago we wouldn't have even had that." Phil said. "Before then there was nothing on her. She was just a face that kept cropping up in Russian intelligence communications."

"So she's KGB?" Clint asked, reading each page carefully.

"No idea. They're not taking responsibility for her – not that we thought they would. All we know is that she's been around for a  _long_  time. Longer than you. We're just starting to piece together her past hits but there isn't a lot to go on." Phil said, leaning across the table to rest his elbows in the space between them. "It's strange though. Before March it's like she barely existed at all. A photograph here and there, a name that to be honest is nothing more than a rumour. She didn't leave a single mark in the world at all despite that we're fairly certain she's been in the game for years, and then all of a sudden she materialised into a living, breathing and _almost track-able_  human being."

"That is weird. Maybe she got tired of being in the shadows?" Clint shrugged. It was the only explanation he could think of.

"Oh, these weren't shadows Clint." Phil argued, his eyes darkening in frustration. "S.H.E.I.L.D sees shadows. She somehow existed completely out of our sight."

"I didn't think that was possible." Clint said, more impressed than anything. "And coming from someone who has tried in the past, that's saying something."

"Yeah, well, she exists now. That's the problem." Phil growled, swallowing the last of his own, long cold, coffee.

"Don't stress. We'll deal with her. No fuss." Clint said, doing his best to seem unconcerned and flippant while taking a large sip of his coffee. "I owe her one now."

"You up for that." Phil asked, blandly, working hard to keep the fire that was quickly igniting in his chest out of his voice.

"Of course I am. I said that yesterday-" Clint began to remind him before he was cut off.

"-this morning actually. Probably seems like a long time ago though, considering you've been awake since." Phil kept his tone as even as possible, bordering on robotic even, but he owed the kid a chance to explain. One last chance to be honest with him.

Clint didn't take it. Instead he froze, mug half way to his lips, and a vein on his forehead throbbing. He just stared at Phil, expression caught between shocked and horrified.

But he said nothing.

"I should have you removed from this assignment-" Phil began, shaking his head slowly. Again he felt like the blame was his own. How could he have let this happen? Let Clint get assigned here when he clearly wasn't up for it. And nearly been killed because of it.

"You can't!" Clint exploded, his expression suddenly becoming much more animated. He leant across the table and stared at Phil imploringly while he spoke. "You know you can't. No one else even has a  _chance_  of taking her down, and you know it. You can't take me off this case. I can do it. I can." He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself more than Phil by the end, and that did nothing to reassure the older man.

"How long?" Phil asked quietly. "How long since you've slept-" Clint went to answer immediately but Phil held up a silencing hand and went on,"-properly?"

At that Clint's face fell and his eyes darted down, ashamed, before he answered quietly. "A few weeks."

Phil ran a hand through his hair and over his own tired eyes. "Since Baghdad."

"It's fine Phil," Clint muttered, stripping his face of emotion until he was staring at Phil evenly. "That assignment was just-" He struggled for a moment. "-a little…close to home. "

The kid had been lying awake for weeks and he hadn't noticed. Hadn't done anything. The thought flooded him with guilt, but brought back the hurt he had been feeling before at a whole new level.

"Have I done something?" Phil asked slowly, confused, and a little desperate.

"What?" That seemed to surprise Clint even more than when Phil called him out on his exhaustion. He tilted his head in confusion as he stared across the table at his handler.

"Have I done something wrong?" Phil repeated. "Something that might waver your trust in me?"  
Realization dawned on Clint's face and a moment later horror replaced it. "God, no, Phil-" He began, but Phil cut him off.

"Then why haven't you come to me?" He asked heatedly, more angry at the situation rather than Clint, but still frustrated that the kid had let things get this far. "You're not alone kid, not anymore. You don't have to carry this on your ow-"

"Yes I do." Clint said with a firmness that took Phil of guard. When Phil looked over at him he found that his eyes had completely closed off. There was no emotion to be found in the blue irises. "I can't afford a crutch, Phil." He continued, anger tinting the words. "And I'm not a kid anymore." He hissed. "I can't just shove all of the memories into the back of my mind and forget about them. What kind of a person would that make me?"

"So you want the nightmares?" Phil asked, uncertain.  
"What? No. I just-" Clint struggled, trying to find the right words before giving up. "You don't understand." He said finally.

"Then help me." Phil pleaded.

"I don't know how-" Again Clint struggled. "-I can't explain it-" And again he gave up when the words wouldn't come to him. "Just forget about it."

"I can't do that, kid. Especially not-" Clint cut him off.

" _Forget it_." He snapped harshly, standing so quickly that his chair almost toppled over, and stomping back into the small kitchen to refill his mug. "And  _stop calling me a 'kid'_."

Phil might have pushed more, tried another tactic, but before he could even begin to strategize a way to understand the mystery that was Clint Barton his phone began to ring. His hand reached for it automatically and with one last glance at Clint answered, forcing his voice to sound calm despite his own churning emotions. Arguing with Clint – really arguing – always left him unsettled, and if the tension in the archers shoulders was a sign than clearly it had the same effect on Clint.

But neither continued to conversation.

"Coulson." Phil said, firmly.

"Phil," John Garret's bombing voice met his ear. "We've found Yozhikov."

"Great. Agent Barton and I are on our way-" He kept his eyes downwards, glaring at the table rather than at Clint who leant tensely against the kitchen cabinets listening to the call.

"Don't bother." Garret cut him off. "He's dead. Has been since yesterday. Murdered."

For the first time that morning Clint's insomnia completely fled his mind. "The Black Widow?" He asked quickly, sorting through his files once more – bringing up the records of her other alleged kills for comparison.

"Can't have been." Garret replied in his typical, easy-going tone – one that, for some reason, had forever frustrated Phil to no end – the sound sirens echoing somewhere in the distance. "Coroner at the scene has put his time of death at around the same time she was hanging your boy off that building. He'd almost made it out of the city too, so there's no way she could have gotten there in time."

Phil sighed heavily and in his peripheral vision he saw Clint slowly moving towards him, his curiosity overcoming his agitation. "So we have another player."

"Looks like."

"If the Black Widow was after the case, then odds are-"

"Third players here for it too." Garret finished. "I hear you Phil, but techs haven't been able to make a dint in it yet. And trust me, I'm motivating them." Phil had no doubt about that. Garret was a slave driver when he wanted to be. "Nothing opens this thing. Techs say they don't even know what the key  _is_ , so we're dreaming if we think we can force it open."

"Lovely. So we have two assassins, an impregnable brief case and absolutely no idea why they're all connected." Phil's eyes flickered upwards just in time to see Clint's brow rise so high that it was in danger of becoming lost in his actual hair.

"You always get the interesting ones, Phil." Garret chuckled.

"Interesting's one word for it."  _Frustrating as hell is another._

"We'll I'm off to Bora Bora to meet up with a rather delightful contact, if I may say so myself. Gorgeous girl who I've been told has the most skilled hands-"

Phil hung up abruptly, before he heard something that he doubted even bleach would remove from his memory, and set his phone down on the table. "Why even bother killing him if he didn't have it?" He asked – mainly himself – as he stared at the files again.

"So we wouldn't know what's in it." Clint answered, standing just across from him while leaning against the table – freshly filled coffee mug in his hands. "It's what I'd do."

"We'll it seems like everyone else knows  _but_  us, so you might be right." Phil leant back in his chair and stared openly at Clint, taking in the hunched shoulders and fidgety fingers that were playing with the mug in his hand. "I can't just drop it." He said after several moments and Clint's twitching fingers froze, his eyes still focused intensely on the mug and not Phil. "I just can't. It's not in my nature to be able to sit by while you tear yourself apart from the inside out." Clint's eyes remained glued to the mug, but the subtle flex of his jaw told Phil that he was listening. "But you're right," Phil went on. "You are the only one who can do this. So I won't have you removed from the assignment, but I won't quit trying to understand either. Fixing your scrambled brain box has always been a two man job, and I'm always up for the challenge." Clint's poker face was back as Phil rose, gathered his strewn files and dawned his jacket. "And just for the record," He added, straightening up and looking back at his agent one more time. "You're always going to be a kid to me."

* * *

"-id we get anything else from the coroners report?" Phil was midway through asking as Clint entered the office that had been set up for those involved in the assignment. Troop teams were still filing through every so often, being assigned about the ruins and to run down other leads, and Clint did his very best to stay clear of them. He wasn't the most popular agent on base, and never had been. Other agents had always avoided him, something about his age and past putting them off, but Clint had never minded. He wasn't the social type anyway. His few, close friends on the New York base had always been enough for him. But at the moment he was glad it was just he and Phil amongst all these strangers. It was bad enough that his sour mood and sleepless nights were affecting Phil, without anyone else being brought into the mix.

Phil's words from earlier were still ringing through his head, his handlers determination to understand driving Clint up the walls. It had taken Phil mere seconds to connect the dreams with Clint's recent assignment in Baghdad, despite that for all intensive purposes the assignment had been a complete success.

One hit. It hadn't even taken a day.

The man had been an arms dealer, trading to the worst men imaginable, and Clint had felt nothing but justified in putting a bullet through his skull – but the hit had gone down at a private airport. An airport where Clint had been paid handsomely to execute a hit once before.

Only that hit he could not justify.

The man, he had found out later, had been a lawyer. He had been in Baghdad investigating faulty military equipment supplied by a US corporation that had sold the malfunctioning equipment knowingly. After the man died the case had been dropped.

He had been on a flight back to Boston to see his three kids when Clint gunned him down.

He still hadn't told Phil. He just couldn't bring himself to say the words.

As if sensing his gaze Phil glanced up towards the doorway as the agent he had been speaking too turned back to one of the many computers about the room. "Please tell me you have  _something_." Phil said while Clint moved into the room.

"Good looks and charm." Clint answered without a pause, his signature smirk firmly in place. "They haven't failed me yet."

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't rely solely on those." Phil replied just as swiftly.

"Your loss." Clint shrugged. "So nothing on our fiery haired assassin? Or her murderous cohorts?"

"Nothing." Phil said, his frustration returning. "The scene at Yozhikov's murder was clean. And so was the roof top where you had your unfortunate run-in."

"How are they doing this?" Clint shook his head, glancing around the room at the boards upon boards of information – none of it even remotely helpful to them. "Staying one step ahead? Completely out of our sight? I mean this isn't just the Black Widow. It would have taken an entire team to take out Yozhikov and his security."

"Yeah but a team from where?" Phil asked. "Like I said the KGB is still denying everything, and we haven't had a single hit on the records we have of their foreign agents despite that we've cross-checked every camera in the city. It's like they just…"

"…Don't exist." Clint finished, repeating Phil's words from earlier that morning. "Which begs the question, why are we seeing them now?" He turned away from the screens to face Phil again, watching confusion spread across his handler's expression. "What's  _so_  important about this briefcase that they're willing to risk catching our attention like this? The case is the key to all this, I'm sure it is, and when we know what's in it we'll finally be able-"

"Yeah, there may be a problem with that."

While Clint was speaking to Phil the doors behind him had opened to reveal a particularly anxious agent who had rushed towards them immediately, cutting Clint off before she had even reached them.

"What do you mean?" Phil's boss voice was at full force.

"The facility where the brief case is being examined is currently being broken into." She said hurriedly, tapping away at the tablet in her hand before showing it to Phil. "This footage was taken less than two minutes ago."

Clint glanced down at the tablet over Phil's shoulder and watched as Natalia Romanova stalked down one of the facilities corridors – taking out the three guards that rushed at her with ease – before the footage went black suddenly.

"What happened?" Phil demanded. "Why did the footage cut-off?"

"She must have disabled the security feed." The agent replied immediately, "The electric locks are reported to have failed as well. She-"

"-Somehow I doubt that she managed to collapse the entire electric system with her legs around a security guard's neck." Clint cut the agent off, before looking across to Phil and continuing. "I think our other, mysterious, team has crashed the party."

"Agreed." Phil nodded, handing the tablet back to the agent while already moving to address the tac-team leaders that were strewn about the office, Clint right beside him and the agent on their heels. "Suit up. I want a team ready to infiltrate in four minutes," He looked across at Clint, "And I want you to go straight for the briefcase, it's the only common denominator so far and I'm not willing to loose it."

"Aye, aye Overwatch."

* * *

"The briefcase was being examined in lab five on the third floor, and as far as we know that door hasn't been tampered with  _yet_  so hopefully that means the case is still there."  
Phil's voice echoed in Clint's ear with all of it's usual precision and clarity as the archer made his way silently along a corridor on the first floor of the facility. There was a familiarity in the situation that left Clint feeling more at home than he had in days. His missions usually consisted of only him and Phil, the older man a constant voice of reason and comfort in his ear while he was out in the field alone. The last few days had been unsettling to say the least. He hadn't worked on a large-scale project in over a year and honestly he didn't miss them. Phil often ridiculed Clint for being too self-sufficient and if he was being honest Clint knew his handler was right, but a lifetime of looking out for himself was not a habit he could break easily. And he didn't particularly want to. Clint did his best work when he was alone, in the shadows, with nothing more than his bow.

And in that moment, with his quiver attached to his back and bow held at his side, he felt more alert than he had in days.

"On it, Overwatch. I'm heading for the north staircase now, ETA two minutes." Clint murmured across the comm, slipping through the door to the staircase silently and starting upwards. He reached the third floor in a matter of seconds and pushed the door to the corridor open a few inches to glance up and down it. Nothing moved in the darkness – the facilities lights having faulted when the security cameras were disabled – and Clint eased himself out into the open space cautiously.

"No sign of the Widow or any other menacing, mystery mercenaries." He reported, keeping his bow arm tensed in case that changed abruptly, "They may not have known whereabouts they were keeping the case – they're probably still searching the first two floors."

"It won't take them long to clear them," Phil replied. "Just get the case and get out – we've still got no visual from the security cameras so where essentially blind out here."

"I'm almost there." Clint reported, spotting a large 5 on a door only a hundred feet down from him.

"And  _'menacing, mystery mercenaries'_?" Phil said, and Clint could almost hear the affectionate grin in his voice. "Feeling poetic today are we?"

"I almost added  _'murderous'_  to the start but I thought that was a bit much. Didn't want to ruin it."

"Your restraint is noted and appreciated."

"You can't fool me Overwatch," Clint grinned as he reached the lab door and began typing in an assortment of random numbers. "I know how much you love my poetry. Bet you still keep that haiku I gave you for your birthday under your pillow-"

Clint couldn't explain it, there was no sound or a warning, but a sudden tingling sensation made itself known on the back of his neck – had been the entire way alone the corridor – and he had learnt long ago to never ignore it.

He pulled away from the metal lab door instantly – throwing himself to one side – and not a second later a bullet imbedded itself in that door where his torso had been.

He had his bow drawn, arrow notched, before he had even straightened back up. He rose slowly as he stared down the bows length at the figure in front of him, the shadows hiding her face but unable to dull that unmistakable red hair.

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't say it's a pleasure to see you again." He said casually mainly for Phil's sake so that the older man would know he had found the young assassin again.

She didn't dignify the words with a response, instead – keeping her Berretta pistol aimed at his forehead – she raised her empty hand to the metal door and entered in the passcode that Clint had seconds ago been typing. When she finished the keypad flashed red for a moment and the door remained locked.

"You didn't think I'd enter the real password with you watching, did you?" He deadpanned, all humour gone. "I was thinking we might have a chat instead."

"Hawkeye disengage and go for the case." Phil's voice ordered in his ear.

Clint glared at the woman before him, planted firmly in place in front of the door he needed to get through. Call it intuition but he was fairly sure she wasn't going to make it easy for him to get by.

"What's in the case?" He demanded, calculating every possible way around her and not liking the answers he was reaching. He had learnt from last time. He knew better than to engage in a fist fight right off the mark – she had proven that she clearly had the upper hand in that particular field – but his firing range within the corridor was small and he saw no other way to get around her than to physically move her.

That didn't mean he couldn't tip the odds in his favour though.

If he ricochet the arrow from the metal door at the right angle it would catch her thigh at a particularly painful angle and he would have the upper hand when it did come down to blows.

But he never took the shot.

A loud crash and several gunshots from the floor below told Clint that the S.H.I.E.L.D Tac-Teams had found the mysterious troop of mercenaries that had killed Yozhikov but he didn't take his eyes from the red-headed woman in front of him. All she needed was one lapse on his part and he was dead, she was that good – so when it was her who threw a glance down the corridor towards the commotion his confusion had him pausing.

For the first time the impassive mask that she had kept firmly in place both times they had met faulted, and something he had not thought possible passed across her expression.

Fear.

"They're not here with you are they?" Clint asked after a second of tense silence. She didn't fault again. Her eyes – which were once again fixed on him as she kept her Berretta pointed squarely at his forehead – remained empty.

Her jaw, however, tensed – only slightly – but enough.

Enough for Clint to finally put all the pieces together.

"They're here  _for_  you." It wasn't a question. Clint knew he was right. It all made sense. Why they continually showed up  _after_  her, not with her. Why the Consulate had been blown away with her inside of it.

The sound of gunfire was now echoing in the stairwell only a hundred feet from where they stood, and Clint knew that in a few seconds the corridor was to be a hell of a lot more crowded.

That knowledge had him doing something that he was sure would turn out to be the worst – and possibly last – mistake of his life.

He lowered his bow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do tell me what you think of it thus far. Too slow? Too fast? Too many Clint and Phil bro-feels? (Is that even possible) And how am I doing depicting our favourite red-headed assassin? Don't worry she is practically a constant from now on in – much to Phil's horror.
> 
> Also specially honour will be given to those who can work out the song that the chapter titles come from….
> 
> Please review! It means so much to know what you think!


	4. Let The Water Lead Us Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hawkeye report. Now damnit!" Phil's voice was back and even more demanding than before.
> 
> "Currently being shot at, but not shot yet." Clint yelled over the gunshots, leaning around his cover to fire a single, well aimed, arrow that took out the gun toting masked-man nearest to him. "So five by five for now, Overwatch."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to 'stefaniegk' and 'Ookamisawa_Hikari' for commenting! You guys made my day!  
> Here we are though, chapter number four filled with a thrill, spill and quite a pissed of Phil!

'The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfilment in whatever form. Both are illusions.' - Eckhart Tolle

* * *

Her eyes remained fixed coldly on him, but Clint could easily make out the confusion in them – the wariness that settled in her shoulders and had her gripping her Berretta even tighter.

"I can help you." He said, not moving towards her, instead keeping his ground. He only had one shot at this.

" _Hawkeye what the hell are you doing_?" Phil's voice was no longer a comforting murmur in Clint's ear but a booming screech of disbelief that even the Widow could hear despite being at least six feet away.

One of her brows rose questioningly – as if to ask the same thing.

"Look, right now, you and I want the same thing." Clint went on hurriedly, ignoring Phil's vigorous objections, all too aware that they had mere seconds before the firefight in the stairwell found them. "To take down the people who are about to violently interrupt this lovely chat." Her gun still didn't waver from his forehead. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?" He continued more imploringly, all to aware that the gunfire had stopped and footsteps could now be heard climbing the stairs.

For a moment those footsteps were all that could be heard.

"No." She finally answered, her voice clear and strong despite the words being barely more than a murmur. "The enemy of my enemy is just another person in my way."

Without another word she pulled back suddenly, throwing herself into the doorway just behind her – taking cover between the large concrete walls. Without a seconds hesitation Clint did the same just as the stairwell door flew open and a spray of bullets rained down on them both – mussel flashes illuminating the entire corridor.

" _Hawkeye_   _report_.  _Now damnit_!" Phil's voice was back and even more demanding than before.

"Currently being shot at, but not shot yet." Clint yelled over the gunshots, leaning around his cover to fire a single, well aimed, arrow that took out the gun toting masked-man nearest to him. "So five by five for now, Overwatch."

After several seconds there was a brief pause in the onslaught of bullets and Clint notched another arrow, ready to let it fly, only to hesitate again when the redhead across from him darted out from her own cover.

Clint had never much understood the idea of a fight being similar to a dance. To him a fistfight was too brutal and sharp to be considered anything even remotely close to a dance. Too desperate and messy.

But watching her – Clint began to change his mind.

She darted out from behind the concrete wall with a lunge that had her in front of the closest gunman in only one step despite her small frame. It gave her enough speed to plant a foot on the man's chest before securing her thighs around his neck and twisting. The sound of his neck snapping replaced the echo of gunfire. She gave him no more notice though. Before she even released the dead man from the grip her thighs had on his throat she had seized the next with her outstretched hands and used her momentum to throw him to the floor with her above him, no doubt shattering his skull – killing him instantly as well.

Clint, too, pulled away from his cover and fired two arrows into the men closest to him before using his bow like a staff to knock another to the ground and render him unconscious. With another arrow notched he couldn't help but glance towards the Widow who had hit the ground at the feet of another masked figure that raised his gun immediately only to have her latch onto his firing arm and rise to her feet, propelling the arm to rise further as well so that when he fired the bullets burrowed themselves into the roof above them. She threw on open palm into his throat – much like she had done to Clint – rendering him unable to breathe for a moment before twisting and pulling him towards her so that his chest was flat against her back. Bullets slammed into his limp body as she took cover behind him. While still holding his arm above both of their heads – effectively keeping him upright – she reached one arm down to his weapons belt and tore it from him. She released him a second later, spinning away from him, and using the belt like a whip to knock the gun from the hand of the man closest to her. Her now spare hand drew her Berretta from its holder at her thigh while she readjusted her grip on the weapons belt – grasping a small device attached to it while the rest of the belt fell to the floor. She threw the device towards the lab door without even a glace while she shot dead the last three men in three successive, and well aimed, bullets.

Clint only had a seconds notice to throw himself to the ground, away from the laboratory door, before the device now attached to it blew it to pieces.

Concrete and other debris was still falling when she leapt over him and darted into the lab through the large crater where the door had been only seconds ago. Ignoring his ringing ears and pulling his now crackling and utterly useless comm from his ear Clint lunged after her, catching her around the waist just inside the lab and pulling them both to the ground heavily with him on top of her, pinning her to the ground with his weight.

He anticipated the elbow that shot up to meet his face and dodged it sharply. What he didn't anticipate was her other hand seizing a hand full of his hair and wrenching forwards so that he had no choice but to follow or be scalped. She flipped him easily over her shoulder before following him in a graceful front sault that brought her to her feet while he was still kneeling in front of her. He used his bow to deflect the fist she threw down at him and then seized her roughly and practically threw her into a nearby storage compartment – its glass doors shattering upon impact. She didn't so much as wince or stumble. The glass hadn't even hit the floor before she was on him again.

He rose to his feet in one motion, hands outstretched and ready, but she flew straight passed him without even a glance. She vaulted over the first of the lab benches and threw herself at the second, sliding along it until her hands met a silver briefcase that lay abandoned and still locked.

"Drop it." She turned her head slightly to look at him again as he stared over at her, arrow notched and bow tensed to fire. She held the case with both hands and made no move to release it despite his order. "I mean it. Drop it, or I'll drop you."

He never found out whether she would have done what he asked or continued to fight. Before he could even take a step towards her there was a shuffling of steps outside the lab door and something metallic was thrown inside. It clattered along the floor until it came to a halt between Clint and the Widow.

All hostilities momentarily forgotten they sprinted, side by side, to the window on the opposite side of the lab – throwing themselves through it as the laboratory exploded forcefully.

After a moment of free-fall they landed side by side on the roof of a car that had been parked just below the lab as rubble rained down on them.

Clint lay still for a moment, hands over his head to deflect falling debris, attempting to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him during the fall. She, on the other hand, sprung up almost immediately as if not bothered by the almost three story fall. She slid down the hood of the car and onto the street, limping slightly for only the first couple of steps, making her way to where the briefcase had fallen only a few feet away.

"You can't run forever." The words came out raspy and almost inaudible as Clint continued to fight to get his breath back. He struggled pull himself up and slid down to the hood of the car just as she had done. "It doesn't matter who you are, who trained you, or how strong you are. No one can run forever." He went on. "No one can survive alone."

She had paused when he spoke, but hadn't turned to face him, and she didn't now either. "I can." There was no pride or arrogance in the words. She truly believed them. If anything the statement was almost dejected.

Clint slid from the bonnet of the car to his feet but moved no further, instead remaining where he was, leant against the car. "You don't have to." He said, staring intently at her while she continued to stare at the case at her feet. "Come back with me. My organisation, it can protect you."

Her head tilted slightly in his direction as he spoke and silence fell for a few moments. "Why?" Was all she asked when she finally spoke, confusion breaking through her monotone.

"Because you know them, you trained with them." Clint explained, nodding towards the building they had just leapt from and the men inside. "They may not have had your skill, but they knew your moves." He clarified. "Stuff I've never even seen before. You must have been trained by the same people, and we need what you know about them." He didn't even bother to hide the truth of what S.H.I.L.D wanted from her. He had a feeling that she would know straight away if he lied to her. And the consequences would be dire.

There was another silence that lasted several, long, seconds but this time he was the one to break it. When he went on his voice was gentler than it had been before. Less demanding and more earnest, but still utterly honest.

"And not so long ago I was where you are, running, when someone offered me another chance." He thought back to how Phil had found him, the kind of man he had been and where he might have ended up without him, and kept going. "You left them – whoever they are – for a reason. You wanted something different. My organisation can give that too you." He offered moving a couple of steps towards her hesitantly. "Maybe even help you find whatever it is that you're running towards."

He was getting through. He was sure of it. Could see her indecision in the set of her shoulders and the mere fact that she had yet to just grab the case and take off.

He was getting to her.

Or so he thought.

Before he could say or do anything she spun to face him and a gunshot echoed around them. In the same moment a burning sensation spread across his lower side and he felt himself falling to the street, limbs unresponsive no matter how hard he tried to move them.

 _Yep_ , he thought sourly, as the world around him grew darker,  _worst and last decision_.  _Ever_.

* * *

The shrill ringing of his cell phone broke Phil from his empty stare down at the file on his lap. He hadn't bean able concentrate long enough to read a single word for hours. "Coulson." He answered, rubbing his eyes.

"You better sound like shit because I've just woken you up, not because you still haven't slept Phil." Fury's voice met his ear with all its usual directness, but Phil could hear the slight undertone of concern. "You got anything new"  
"A migraine." Phil sighed.

"Don't we all." Fury replied without a pause, sounding like he too could use some long overdue sleep himself. "Been able to verify anything your boy figured out yet?"

"You mean whether she's really defected?" Phil clarified, attempting to get his muddled thoughts to cooperate. "No. The second explosion wiped out everything inside the facility – bodies and all – so we're still searching." He reported. "But as far as we know the corpses had no kind of identification on their tac-suits."

Fury was silent for only a moment. "And your boy Phil, how's he doing?" He went on more softly.

Phil looked up to the infirmary bed barely a foot from him and at his worryingly pale agent that lay unmoving upon it, just as he had for the last three days. "His fever broke this morning so doctors are hopeful he'll wake up soon." Phil said, not taking his eyes off the young archer.

"They find out what it was that poisoned him?"

"No. They think it must have been the bullet. That she coated it in something, but they have no idea what. Apparently they couldn't isolate it in his blood so, we still have no clue." Phil sighed trying his best to keep his frustration from filtering into his voice. He had yelled for so long at the infirmary staff when they told him they had no idea why Clint was getting sicker that he had almost been forcibly removed. "But it looks like it's wearing off, not getting worse, so that's something at least." Phil doubted his frayed nerves would have been able to take much more bad news.

"Glad to hear it." Fury said. "Barton's one of the most stubborn bastards I've ever met Phil, he'll be fine."

"Yeah, I know." Phil agreed, his eyes still on Clint's bed-ridden form, nodding despite that Fury couldn't see him. "Thank you, sir."

"You keep up this 'sir' shit Coulson and he'll be the one sitting by  _your_  hospital bed." Fury threatened, but the exasperated affection in his voice took any real bite from the words and brought a small grin to Phil's otherwise exhausted face. "Or worse, fourth floor cubical, because I've demoted your ass so far down the food chain that lunch-ladies will be giving you orders."

"Duly noted, sir."

Phil just caught the muttered,  _bloody kid's wearing off on him_ , before Fury disconnected the call. He slid the phone back into his pocket before finally closing the un-read file in his lap and standing to lean over Clint's cot to get a better look at him.

The bullet wound itself had been fairly superficial – burrowing shallowly in the lower left side of his abdomen without hitting anything major – and to be honest when Phil had found him he hadn't been all that worried. His agent was known to get worse paper-cuts than the shallow wound. Phil had merely credited the kid's unconsciousness to the fall from the third story and far too little rest over the last few weeks. He should have known better.

Clint never did any injury half way.

It wasn't until Phil was riding with him in the med-evac on the way to the Berlin base that he noticed the fever that was growing, and later when the med-team unwrapped the wound that they found the black discolouration to the veins surrounding it. That had been when Phil's fear really set in. He hadn't left the infirmary since.

In the days that followed Clint had only gotten worse. His fever had risen to dangerous levels and the discolouration to his veins had only spread, but none of the doctors had been able to find a single trace of poison. No trace of anything at all.

It had been infuriating.

And as if Clint's deteriorating condition hadn't been enough the teams that he had searching the entire city had yet to dig up a single thing on the Black Widow. She had fled the facility without a trace and the briefcase had yet to be dug up in the ruins so Phil was left with no assumption but that she somehow managed to grab it.

He continued to lean against the infirmary cot for several minutes, taking in with relief the colour that was steadily returning to his agent's face, before running a hand through his own abused hair and turning to sit back down in his abandoned chair.

Half way down into the chair, however, a soft groan caught his attention and Phil's head snapped back to his agent.

"Clint?" He asked, springing back up to beside his cot with more energy than he knew he had. "Clint can you hear me?"

"- _son of a-_ " The words were garbled and barely comprehensible but something.

"Clint." Phil put on his best 'boss voice', as Clint called it. "Open your eyes."

Clint's eyes twitched before one inched open slightly, taking in the room around him. "Phil?"

"Yeah, it's okay." Phil assured him, placing a restraining hand on his shoulder as he attempted to sit up. "Just relax. You're a little banged up, but you're going to be fine now."

Clint's brow furrowed as he blinked several times in order clear his head. "Now?" He asked, confused.

"It was touch and go for a little while." Phil admitted while Clint got his bearings, glancing around the room and scowling when he realized he was in the infirmary.

That scowl only grew when a realization dawned on him.

"She shot me." Clint said, his voice much clearer. "She  _shot_  me." He repeated, furious, as he sat up despite Phil's restraining hand. "That bitch." He hissed, "Please tell me you have her."

"No. And we don't have any leads either." Phil said, feeling just as frustration as Clint currently looked. "She got the case." He added after a moment.

"I know." Clint sighed as he pushed himself up further on the bed. Phil straightened up from his position leaning over the cot so that the kid could swing his legs over the edge and test his weight on them. Countless arguments over the years about Clint taking it easy after an injury had taught Phil that he had to wait until Clint collapsed on his own before he would follow any sort of medical advice. The best thing for Phil to do was stay close enough to catch him when that inevitably happened.

Which, going by the flicker of pain that passed through Clint's face as he leant against the bed, was not far off.

"What?" Phil asked at once. Clint wasn't the kind to show pain – in fact he found the idea of sharing one's suffering almost personally insulting – so Phil knew something must be very off. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Clint assured him. "It just…feels strange."

"Painful?" Phil pressed only to have the archer look over at him condescendingly.  
"It's a bullet wound, Phil," He pointed out. "It's painful." He shook his head for a moment before continuing. "But usually its like a stabbing pain, this one…it kinda burns."

"That would probably be from the poison." Phil said only for Clint's eyes to flash up to his in alarm. "You were poisoned." Phil added, realizing that he hadn't mentioned that yet.

"By what?" Clint asked heatedly. Phil merely shook his head and let the frustration that had been building up in his chest since he first asked the same question shine through. Clint huffed. "Seriously, this assignment Phil…"

"I know." Phil said – the entire mission had been one answerless question after another. "Hopefully they'll get her and we'll get some answers."

Clint's jaw flexed. " _They'll_  get her?" He asked slowly.

"You and I are booked on a flight back to the New York base tonight-" Phil began, his voice leaving no room for argument.

So naturally Clint ignored every word he said.

"What?" He argued at once. "No. We're not done-"

"You were shot, poisoned and have been unconscious for three days." Phil told him evenly. This was not a topic that was up for discussion. "You're  _done_ , Clint."

"I was getting to her, Phil." He said earnestly. "I was getting through to her."

"Right up until she shot you?" He asked, his voice becoming condescending now. Clint had the sense scowl at the truth in Phil's words but said nothing. Clearly he wasn't backing down that easily. Phil tried a more gentle approach. "She doesn't want your help." He said solemnly, before adding, "Besides, the woman  _shot_  you, you shouldn't even want to help."

"I tried to shoot you when we first met." Clint reminded him with a small grin.

"The significant word there being 'tried'." Phil pointed out.

"So what?" Clint's grin grew. "If I'd hit you, you would have left me for dead?"

"Damn straight."

The kid laughed outright, wincing slightly as the motion jostled his wound. "You're all heart Overwatch."

There was a silence between them as all humour faded away and Clint's expression fell.

"She doesn't want your help." Phil said again. "And even if by some miracle she did, you can't honestly say that you would be up for it." The archer said nothing – which in Clint's language was as close to an agreement as Phil knew he would get. "Sometimes you got to know when to walk away kid."

"Yeah." Clint said despondently. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

* * *

"So he's fine." Phil clarified one last time.

He had stayed with Clint until his agent fell asleep once more and then set about gathering the latest information on his condition now that he was awake and functioning.

"Yes, Agent Coulson." The doctor nodded slowly, "Technically he's fine."

" _Technically_?" Phil repeated irritably. "You'll have to forgive me if that's not very comforting. Is it even safe for him to be transported?"

"Yes. We think so." The doctor said, again not sounding very ensuring. "But you have to understand Agent Coulson that we still have no idea why he  _wasn't_  fine to begin with. We've sent samples of his blood to specialists at the New York base to have them further examined but we haven't received any definitive results yet."

"So what do you know?" Phil asked, pinching the bridge of his nose to keep him from exploding at the man in front of him. He was just so damn  _tired_  of having every single medical professional he approached tell him they had nothing.

If he ever gets his hands on Natalia Romanova, he's going to throttle her.

"We know that the discolouration to his veins is fading and that his vitals are returning to normal." The doctor assured. "We also know that his wound is actually healing at an incredible rate – we think that might be a side-effect of his prolonged fever – and that there doesn't appear to be any brain damage due to it."

"So basically we're assuming that he's fine because he looks fine." Phil concluded.

"At this point – with nothing else to go on – it's all we can do." The doctor said before continuing much more eagerly. "But if you would let us keep him here for a little longer-"

"No." Phil ordered. "If he's fine enough to go back to New York then we're leaving tonight. Like you said there are specialists there."

"Agent this poison could be incredibly valuable. It had practically healed his wounds. If you let us take more samples and experiment with-"

At that Phil finally snapped.

He seized the man by the collar of his lab coat and pulled him closer so that when Phil spoke even, and with enough malice to render the man terrified, no one else could overhear.

"I don't care how  _valuable_ ," He spat, "This poison could potentially be. My agent is not going to be your lab rat. He is going back to New York  _tonight_  where there are doctors who will actually treat him rather than hope that whatever nearly killed him gets them a promotion."

The doctor had enough sense to say nothing more. He nodded vigorously at every word Phil hissed and then fled the corridor the moment he was released from Phil's grip.

The doctor had no sooner fled from sight than another voice called out to him. "Agent Coulson?" Phil turned, half expecting to find a terrified medical intern, only to see Clint's nurse down the hall looking less than pleased.

She didn't need to say anything more. Her irritation said it all.

"He's gone, isn't he?"

* * *

Clint was getting really sick of ruins.

He had spent hours looking at the ruins of the Consulate and now he had been wandering around what was left of the lab facility that had been blown to pieces for almost as long.

He was just about to give up and head back to the wraith of Phil when he felt it – the tingling sensation in the back of neck.

He pivoted, notching an arrow as he did, so that when he came face to face with her he was once again staring at the Black Widow along the length of a drawn bow.

"How did you know I would come back?"

Her voice held the slightest amount of surprise, but going by what Clint had seen of her emotional range so far she might as well have fainted in astonishment.

"Because I may not know you, but I  _do_  know you're not stupid." He said keeping his bow raised as he walked slowly towards where she stood beside a half collapse pillar. "Whatever it is that's coming for you, you can't handle it alone. So despite how royally pissed off I am with you right now, I thought I would give you one last chance. And I am serious about the last part." His voice darkened. He paused leaving around eight feet between them, the perfect firing distance. He was so done with her shit. "Either you walk out of her with me, or you leave in a body bag. Is that clear?"

She didn't answer. Instead she looked him up and down slowly, taking him in, eyes lingering on his side where she had shot him.

"You look okay."

"No thanks to you, yeah, I'm feeling much better." He snapped, rightfully angry, and ready to dish out a whole new level of sarcasm and unpleasantness that he saved for people who shoot him until he finally noticed her appearance. "You on the other hand – at risk of sounding like a hypocrite – look like shit." The bags around her eyes rivalled even his despite that he hadn't slept soundly in months. There was also a paleness to her skin that hadn't been there the last time he saw her. And the slightest blue taint to her lips that left her looking even worse than he did. "Rough few days?" He asked, keeping his voice easy. In all honesty she actually looked like she might keel over at any second, and he couldn't deny that it was a little disconcerting. "Look, you came back here because you know I'm right. You need help. And judging by your prickly personality there probably isn't a long list of people who are willing to help you-"

"-Actually," She cut him off slowly, her eyes focusing on something directly behind him just as the tingling sensation in Clint's neck returned in full force. "I came back to for her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So all hasn't been revelled YET, but it will be. Don't worry Nat's going to start co-operating soon enough. She wouldn't be our fiery-haired assassin if she didn't put up a fight first.
> 
> In regards to the next chapter, there are fights to the death, some impressive bowman ship from Clint, and a plot twist that neither of our favourite assassins is expecting…
> 
> What did you think? How was the fight sequence? I haven't written one before so you'll have to tell me how it worked out. I wanted for Clint to really take in Natasha fighting style because, to him, it's all new. He's never seen anyone move like that.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! I'd love to hear them! And I'll give a shout out as well to anyone who can guess the song that the chapter titles are from!


	5. And I Was Sorry For What I'd Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint had always known that, compared to others, he'd had a rather tough life. Not at all kind or gentle, but shooting the woman beside him a glance he realised that despite how unpleasant it had been, it had still been a life. He had lived.
> 
> Something that he was beginning to doubt she had done at all.
> 
> "How long were you with them?" He asked after several moments of silence.
> 
> Her answer was immediate. "Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are! The next chapter, and if possible even more action packed than the last!  
> I'm so sorry about the delay! This should have been up yesterday but life got crazy!  
> Hope you enjoy! Again my sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!

'I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become.' – Carl Jung

* * *

"Put down the bow."

A female voice spat the command as the barrel of a silencer pressed up against the back of his head ominously.

Clint looked back up at the Widow but she did nothing. There was a tension about her that had Clint believing the woman currently holding a gun to his head was not a friend to either of them – which begged the question of why the Widow had come back for her at all.

He had a feeling the answer was not a good one for the woman behind him.

"Right, well," He said – ignoring the other woman completely and speaking only to the Widow who was leant casually against the ruins in front of him. "The first thing you and I are going to do when we get back is have a very serious conversation about what is considered appropriate company."

Clint had never seen anyone glare at him with less amusement than the Widow did in that moment – and he could be a pretty annoying guy. Though he had a feeling Phil might give her a run for her money when he found out Clint had ditched him.

He stared at the red-headed assassin for a moment before breaking into a grin and laughing outright – earning that slight surprise from her again and unsettling the woman behind him. The gun at his head withdrawing slightly.

"Don't worry," He snickered at the Widow. "I'm just messing with you. You'll get used to it."

He had barely finished speaking when he pivoted, the other woman's distraction allowing him to catch her off guard and use his bow as a staff to knock the gun away from his head just in time for the shot she fired to go wide.

Unfortunately she recovered more quickly than Clint thought possible. She let the gun fall from her hand without a second thought only for the other to arch towards him – knife first. Clint barely managed to get an arm up to prevent the knife burying itself in his chest, but the movement was futile in the end.

The knife never even got close to him.

A flash of red was all the warning he got before the Widow was on them both. She caught the other woman's descending arm before swinging between her and Clint, capturing that arm and using it to propel them both forwards. They slammed into the ground a few feet in front of him in a tangle of powerful limbs, giving Clint his first opportunity to take in the new face. From what he could see, calling her a woman was a bit of a stretch – Clint doubted that she was even eighteen. She was the Widow's opposite in almost everyway. Where the Widow was small, controlled, with fiery red hair the other girl was long, wild and blonder than anyone Clint had ever seen. Their combat style though was identical, just like the men in the facility. Whoever this girl was, she had clearly been trained by the same people who trained the Widow.

Unlike the men at the facility, however, this girl had her skill as well.

They grappled for a moment, each blow met equally, until the Widow managed to get a more secure grip on her and drove them both into a nearby concrete, support beam with enough force to potentially crack both of their skulls open. As was the pattern the Widow recovered first, as if she hadn't felt the blow at all. She blocked a wild swing the blond sent as her before seizing her roughly by the throat and shoving her back towards Clint.

"Your turn," Clint's voice was as cold and unwavering as the drawn bow in his arms. "Drop it." He ordered the blonde who had yet another knife gripped in one of her hands.

She didn't even look at him. Instead she kept her gaze entered on the Widow who was barely a few feet from her and stalking closer inch by inch.

"I see the infection didn't kill him." The girl commented casually, nodding her head towards Clint. "Lucky boy."  _Infection_? Is that what she'd poisoned him with? Is that why it hadn't shown up in any of the doctors' tests? He couldn't help but throw a heated glare in the Widow's direction for that particular stunt – it was bad enough that she had shot him but  _infect_  him. Infect him with what? Before he could think too much about it the girl was speaking again, a loathing settling in her voice. "You are not going to be so fortunate, Natalia." All thought of infection fled his mind and he began gripping his bow a little tighter. Clint had the feeling this girl got close to her targets due to them constantly underestimating her ability. He was not about to be one of them.

When she spoke again her voice had lost all of its false-civility. There was nothing but hatred in every syllable.

Whatever history the two had, it was not a good one.

"I deserve that title." The blonde spat, hunching towards the Widow who still stood only a few feet away from her looking cool as a cucumber. Clint got the impression though that there wasn't much that would unsettle the redheaded assassin.

He was right.

The slightest of smirks tugged at her lips for a second as she stared at the blonde girl before her as if she was nothing more than a petulant child.

"Come and take it then." The Widow goaded.

For a moment the blonde said nothing, just stared at the Widow. When she did finally respond her voice was sickly sweat once more.

"Okay."

Clint knew that tone.

"SNIPER!" He roared, pulling back and throwing himself behind a large concrete slab in the rubble nearby as bullets rained down in the exact place he had been standing not seconds ago, echoing in through the abandoned ruins. The blonde – now free of Clint's threatening bow – took the opportunity to launch herself at the Widow, sending them both crashing through the window of the half ruined facility behind them and out of Clint's sight. He was bared from following by another wave of bullets that slammed into the concrete slab he was taking cover behind so instead he dove into the building beside him. The wall closest to him had collapsed in the explosion so he only had a few feet he had to cross before he was back undercover and now able to get a better look at what he was up against.

From what he could tell it was only two gunmen, spaced evenly along the rooftop of a third building that overlooked the courtyard in which the Widow, the blonde and he had been standing. They must have set up while the blonde distracted the Widow and him because Clint had searched every building on the site multiple times before coming out into the open. After all, he was originally a sniper. He knew the dangers of being visible to the wrong people. He also knew that those snipers were here to keep him out of the way as neither of them had fired a shot at the Widow or the blonde.

He returned the arrow he had drawn earlier to his quiver and slipped his torso through his bowstring so that the bow itself hung across his back. Setting off at a sprint he took to ascending the ruined building as quickly as possible.

His S.O. in the army had given him a piece of advice on his first day as a sniper in the field and it had never left him.

 _Make the first shot count_ , he had said _, because you won't live long enough to take a second_.

Clint was going to teach that very lesson to whoever these people were.

The building's stairs were perilous – an entire floor having almost crumbled completely – but with some agility and adrenaline he managed to climb to the fifth floor and exit into a corridor that would bring him closest to the adjacent building. The window at the end of that corridor had been shattered already, but the window into the adjacent building had not. Unfortunately there was little he could do about that.

Picking up speed he reached the end of the corridor and launched himself out of the broken widow and through the closed one across from it. There were no shots from the snipers above him – a small mercy – as he leapt but he wasn't stupid enough to think that they wouldn't hear his crashing entrance. He crashed through the opposite window and into a front roll on the glass littered flooring before using what little momentum he had left to propel himself towards the staircase across from him.

Instead of heading upwards though he waited, poised by the entrance, and soon the tell tail sound of boots descending informed him that the snipers had abandoned their posts when they heard him and come in search of him personally, as he had hoped they would.

He withdrew a Desert Eagle from its holster at his side and fired several shots through the wall in rapid succession. The sound of one of the gunmen falling met him immediately.

The other came barging through the doorway a moment later.

While Clint may not have possessed the hand-to-hand skills that the Black Widow obviously maintained, his were still nothing to be sneered at. He hadn't lost a spar at S.H.I.E.L.D in over two years despite having challenged almost every agent.

The man swung first and Clint dodged easily, ducking beneath the man's wild swing and landing a jab at his liver. Spinning quickly he narrowly escaped a right-hook, but couldn't avoid the knee that collided painfully with his chest. He took a leaf out of the Widow's book and caught the next fist that the man threw at him. With a sharp twist he shattered the wrist and the man pulled away with a hiss of pain. Clint propelled him further with a forceful boot to the chest before drawing a Desert Eagle and putting a single bullet in the man's forehead. He fell to the floor, dead, a second later.

He shoved the gun back into its holster while rubbing his chest. His own bullet wound may have healed insanely quickly but taking a blow to it hadn't been exactly comfortable. Ignoring the burn that had returned to his torso he stepped closer to the fallen man – rummaging through his combat gear for any markings or identification. There was nothing. Not a damn thing. Not even his weapons had registration numbers on them – no scratches where the registration numbers had been filed off.

Who the  _hell_  are these people?

The sudden shattering of glass from the one of the adjacent buildings had him dropping the body and sprinting to the window across from him. For a moment he just scanned both buildings, unsure of where the noise had come from, until he saw it.

A flash of red in the building the two women had made a crashing entrance.

Clint had an arrow notched the second he saw them. The two were a blur that passed by a window on the second floor every so often, but neither of them paused long enough for Clint to gage which of them seemed to have the upper hand. In fact neither of them paused at all.

Clint knew one thing about these people – their skill and stamina was incredible.

He stood by the window and looked down at the two for several moments, watching each land hit after hit and throwing each other across the room. The Widow finally got her strong fingers around the blonde's neck, but in desperation one of the blonde's arms swung free – arching downwards towards the Widow with her knife gripped tightly in it.

Once again the knife never reached its intended target.

An arrow imbedded itself in the blonde's eye with enough force to rip her from the Widow's grip and slam her head backwards into the wall behind her. The Widow just stared for a second and then her head snapped around to look directly through the shattered window at Clint who stood over two hundred feet away, three floors up and at a odd angle to the window.

There was nothing mild about her surprise this time.

She stared at Clint for several seconds across the several hundred feet between them, eyes wide and breathing laboured, until Clint raised a very pointed finger towards her before jabbing it downwards.

 _You. Downstairs. Now_. The motion portrayed clearly.

She nodded slowly, still not taking her eyes off him even as he pulled away from the window and headed towards the stairwell.

He took each stair two at a time until he was at the ground floor and stalking back into the courtyard between the three buildings, his bow gripped tightly but not raised. Yet.

She emerged seconds later, cautiously and slowly, her eyes once again trained on him with a new intensity. An odd mixture of fear and admiration.

"Who are you?" She asked, still looking at him as if she was finally seeing him for the first time. Perhaps she was. People had a tendency to underestimate him until they saw him shoot.

He could tell by the way she was looking at him now that it was a mistake she was only going to make once.

"I'm the man who is going to put an arrow through your skull unless you start talking right the hell now." He growled, flexing his the hand gripping his bow threateningly. "I want," He spat, taking care to speak every word clearly and not loose his temper too much. "Some god-damn answers, so you can give them to me or I can-"

"Okay." She cut him off evenly much to his surprise. She leant against the wall beside her, keeping her distance, much like she had when he first found her in this courtyard. "What do you want to know?"

To his credit he recovered quickly. "Who was she?" He asked at once, his curiosity taking over. If she was going to speak he was going to question her until he was blue in the face, because he had a feeling her compliance wouldn't last very long. "And why the hell would you come back here if it wasn't to take up my offer?"

"Her name was Lydia." She said "We-" She paused for a moment, struggling for words for the first time. "-Grew up together." She finished eventually, before reconsidering and adding, "In a sense."

He ignored that odd bit of information for now, something else had been bothering him since she had spoke earlier. "What did she mean when she said she wanted your title?" He asked.

"Where I come from certain titles have certain status – the Black Widow being one of the highest." She explained casually, as if clarifying the social structure of a multi-corporate business rather than an underground faction of assassins. "And the only way to take that title is to kill the current one."

"That would mean you…" He began but wasn't sure how to finish.

She had no such trepidation. "Killed the last one." She finished. "Yes, I did."

"So what?" He asked, incredulously. "Your organisation promotes the killing of your co-workers if it'll get you a promotion."

"Not exactly." She said dryly. "They do promote the decapitation of traitors, though."

"And again I ask, why did you come back?" He asked, incredulously. "You knew she was going to try and kill you."

"For this." For the first time Clint noticed a small black box in one of her hands. She held it out for him and he saw that it resembled a kind of hard-drive – small and slim.

"What is that?" He asked, fighting the urge to take a step closer and examine it.

"It's a bio-sensor." She said looking down at it, her jaw flexing at the very sight of it. "It's a locator for the trackers they implanted in us when we join. It's how she found me." She explained more thoroughly, clenching her hand around it again and lowering it back to her side where Clint could barely see it. "And now I have a bio-sensor I can find mine and get it out."

"Never heard of an X-ray in Russia I take it?" Clint commented, his natural snark firmly back in place.

"The trackers are made of a similar compound to bone. An X-ray wouldn't find it." She said disdainfully, her heated glare back in place as well, until a moment later though it was gone. Replaced by a more grim expression. "Like I said, these people really don't like deserters." She went on, turning the device in her hands over and over. She lost herself in thought, before looking back up and Clint as if she had forgotten he was there. "Any other questions?"

"Just one." He said haughtily, having to consciously keep himself from yelling the next question out of frustration. "Who the hell are ' _these people_ '?!"

It was all he could do not to fire an arrow at her head when she answered. "That is-" She began, pausing for a moment, before evading the question with a sigh. "An obscenely long story."

"Oh, we have time." He snapped immediately. "We have all the damn time-"

"No we don't." She cut him off. "My tracker is still transmitting, we're not going to be alone for much longer." There was an urgency in her voice that Clint trusted. Even if he didn't like it. He and Phil had been cooped up and beyond frustrated for days – he wanted his answers right the hell now.

But she was right.

He'd seen enough of ' _these people_ ' to know that he didn't want to meet any more.

He was about to say as much when she spoke again, quieter this time. More sincere. "And you were wrong." She said meeting his gaze without hesitation and he saw something in her eyes that he couldn't name. It wasn't trust – he doubted that she had ever trusted anyone in her life – it was more a lack of hostility. "I did come back here to take you up on your offer." She clarified, before adding with a nod towards his bullet wound, "If you'd lived."

" _If I'd…_ " He repeated equally incredulous and outraged. "Look, in my organisation the occasional inter-agency homicide is not condoned." He said animatedly. The words might have been considered sarcastic if he wasn't actually a little concerned that she didn't realize this. When she didn't reply that concern grew. What had he gotten himself into? "Okay?" He asked, vehemently.  
"Noted." The dry tone was back.

"Good." He snapped, just as scathingly. "Then let's go somewhere more private and cut this thing out before anymore of ' _these people_ ' show up."

* * *

The drive to where the Widow had stashed the case was the most awkward of his life. Which was saying something.

The sun had begun to set as they fled the ruined facility, the city and highways bustling with workers heading for home. The sedan Clint had hotwired from the S.H.I.E.L.D car park fitting right in amongst the other family cars.

Clint had disabled the GPS as soon as he left the Berlin base to keep Phil from following him straight to the facility and physically dragging him back to New York, but he repaired it now. Knowing Phil the man would be on them in a matter of minutes, ready to unleash one of his better tirades at Clint's reckless behaviour.

Just enough time to get to the case.

Hopefully that would diminish his anger just a little. Though Clint got the feeling that seeing the Black Widow alive and with him wouldn't help him much.

He had been firm that he – and S.H.I.E.L.D – would only take her if they had the case as well, and to his surprise she hadn't protested. In fact she had merely nodded, given an address that was not too far from them, and made her way towards where he had parked his stolen car as if she had expected nothing less.

Clint would have been lying if he said her easy compliance wasn't a little disconcerting.

Since telling him the address, however, she hadn't said a word, which was probably for the best. Every time she opened her mouth his frustration tended to grow exponentially. The drive was likely to be a lot less heated and strained if both of them remained silent, but there was one question that he couldn't keep out of his head no matter hard he tried. No matter how much he tried to stay silent.

So he stopped trying.

"How old was she?" He asked finally, not needing to go into any more detail. They both knew he was talking about the blonde girl he had killed.

She had looked so young. Younger than anyone Clint had killed before no matter how necessary it might have been and he was a little afraid to find out the answer.

He had never had the strictest of moral codes – he was an assassin himself for some time after all – but one thing he had been unwavering on was children. He had never, and had been sure that he would never, murder a child, and the fear that he had was about to consume him.

"Old enough to be held accountable for her actions." Was the only answer he got from the red head beside him.

"Accountable for what?" He asked heatedly. "Trying to kill you."

"No." She said, not sparing him even a glance as she stared out of the car's side window. "For everything else." She went on. "She'd been active for nearly a decade. Believe me – what you did was justified."

 _Ten years_? She hadn't looked legal let alone old enough to have been in this business for ten years. For what he was sure was the hundredth time in the last few days he found himself more curious about whom ' _these people_ ' were.

And even more disgusted by them.

"How long have you been active?" The question was out before he had even realized he wanted to know the answer.

At first she was silent for so long that he though she wouldn't answer at all.

When she finally did, he almost wished she hadn't.

"Longer."

He nodded slowly, careful to keep his expression neutral despite the churning in his stomach.

Over a decade? She'd been doing this for over a decade. He'd only been an assassin for a measly five years. And four of those had been for the government – assassinations that he had known to be justified and right.

He had only worked for hire for little over a year. One year, and yet sometimes he felt like he was drowning in the innocent blood he spilt. She'd been killing innocent people for over a decade.

He didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed that she was still functioning.

He knew with absolute certainty that if Phil hadn't found him Clint's own darkness would have eaten him alive long before he reached a decade.

"How old are you?" He asked, sure that he was pushing his luck but to curious to remain quiet. If she was as young as he thought she was then she would have already been a killer by the time she was eight years old, at least.

Again he was a little hesitant to hear her answer. Only this time she didn't give one. He waited several minutes but she said nothing.

"Look, you're going to have to tell all of this to S.H.I.E.L.D anyway so you might as well tell me now." He argued, shooting a sidewards glance at her.

It took some time but eventually she did answer.

Somehow it was worse than he had imagined.

"I don't know." She said evenly.

"How can you not know?" He asked fighting the urge to look over at her again instead of concentrating on the road.

"They never told me."

Not much could render Clint silent.

That did.

Clint had always known that, compared to others, he'd had a rather tough life. His parents had died when a drunk driver hit their car. Only Clint and his brother Barney had escaped alive. They were later sent to an orphanage before fulfilling the age of stereotype of running away to a circus. It was there he discovered his perchance for a bow, found a new family amongst others who had done the same, and then lost it all. Again.

Then came his under aged stint in the military, after that came the subsequent incarceration because of the under aged stint in the military, an alarmingly simple prison break and then the longest year of his life. His thirteen months as a paid assassin – thirteen months of trying to loose himself in world's darkest corners.

Then Phil and the best few years of his life. A place where he had felt he belonged completely.

No. Not the easiest of lives, not kind or gentle, but shooting the woman beside him a glance he realized that despite how unpleasant it had been, it had still been a life. He had lived.

Something that he was beginning to doubt she had done at all.

"How long were you with them?" He asked after several moments of silence.

Her answer was immediate. "Always."

He nodded but kept his attention firmly on the road despite his burning desire to ask exactly how long 'always' was. Since birth? He bit his tongue though, sensing that her compliance was waning and all too aware that there were some more pressing issues to be discussed. "Listen, I know I said that S.H.I.E.L.D would take you in – and I meant it – but I may have glazed over how difficult a process it might be." He said, shooting her a glance to see how she took the words. She didn't react at all, not that he was surprised, just kept staring out of the passenger window waiting for him to go on. When he did the words were more strained. "Or that they had actually agreed." He admitted. "It was kind of a spur of the moment offer, but one that I fully intend to see through. You're just going to have to work with me a little."

"If you get me a meeting with your Director, I can do the rest."

"Yeah, he's not-" Clint began, struggling to find a way to describe Fury that didn't include the phrase ' _paranoid bastard_ '. "-the most trusting of men." He settled with. "Or forgiving." He added. "Or accepting." There really was no way to describe Nick Fury – and that was probably because no one actually knew anything about him. Clint had asked him what happened to his eye once. Only once. The lack of an answer and three months worth surveillance in Nepal watching a deserted mountain shack had convinced him not to ask again. "He's-"

"If you can get me a private meeting, none of that will be a problem." She cut him off. If her certainty hadn't caught his attention her next words would have. As it was he swerved so hard he nearly wrapped them around a passing pole. "I have information that Nickolas Fury has been searching for his entire life, and no reason to keep it to myself anymore."

 _How the hell did she know his name?_  Clint hadn't even known that Fury existed before he found himself in his office the day Phil brought him in – and he had done his research as soon as Phil approached him days earlier. Dug up everything he could find on the organisation. Memorised nearly every aspect of it.

Clint's assessment of Fury as a paranoid bastard was not one he had given lightly. The man was  _the_  spy of all spies after all.

Hell, Clint hadn't even been sure that Nick was short for Nicolas until that moment.

"What kind of information?" He prompted abruptly. His curiosity was back with a vengeance. So naturally she said nothing. "If you want me to get you, the Black Widow – infamous assassin – a private meeting with Director Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D who you shouldn't even know exists, you're going to have to give me something to work with." He argued insistently – and he was right. Without something to offer they were going to kill her before  _he_  even had a chance to speak with Phil, let alone Fury.

She nodded slowly.

"Tell him 'Devyat'."

When she said nothing more Clint glared over at her. "'Devyat'?" He repeated.

What the hell was that meant to mean?  
"He'll understand." She said, unconcerned by his clear annoyance. "Tell him I know what it is, and he'll see me."

The roads were growing smaller, and the traffic lighter, as Clint grew closer to the suburban address that she had given him. He was both relieved and anxious for their brief trip to end. On the one hand her company was less than enjoyable, her steely outer shell and the fact that she had tried to kill him on multiple occasions darkening the mood of the car – but at the same time Clint was more than aware that the next few hours were not going to be much easier.

"Alright." He supressed his curiosity for the time being before pulling into the final street and heading towards the apartment building she claimed to have stored the case within. "But the journey to Fury though is not going to be very pleasant." He warned her, hoping to keep the animosity as low as possible when agents did finally catch up with them. "S.H.I.E.L.D are under the impression that you bombed a consulate, and they don't usually take that kind of thing well." He looked over at her, realizing that she had never actually denied the accusation, his stomach sinking. "You didn't actually bomb it, did you?"

Finally she tore her eyes from the passenger window, sending him a dry look. "No." She said coolly.

"Good." He replied. That would make things a little easier at least. "That's one thing I guess." He was nodding to himself, flipping through the ways he might pitch this to Phil when the older man caught up with them, when a something occurred to him. "You didn't kill three SH.I.E.L.D agents in 2009 by any chance, did you?" He asked cautiously, sure that this was going to become another question that he regretted. He was right. She said nothing. "Wonderful." He groaned, thinking back to her small file and the suspected assassinations within it. So apparently that one was rightfully suspected. That wasn't going to go down well. "Just- just keep that to yourself for now." He warned her, grinding his teeth. Screw getting her into S.H.I.E.L.D, he was going to be lucky to get her through tonight alive when the other found them. S.H.I.E.L.D didn't take the murder of their own well. "Whatever information you have better be as valuable as you think."

"It is." She said.

They were close now. Only a few apartment complexes away, and Clint knew that that meant Phil would be too. He had had more than enough time to track them down.

And Clint had a feeling the handler would be more than motivated after his abrupt departure.

"Why did you leave?" Clint asked, spotting the apartment building and realizing this might be the last few minutes he had with her. "Why defect?" He asked bluntly. "If you want me to trust you, help you, especially  _after you shot_ me, then I need a reason." He looked over at her and found, to his surprise, that she was actually looking back for once. That she was listening. "I need to know that you want this."

He wondered, weeks, even years, later if she would have answered. And if so, what her answer might have been. Whether it would have been the truth. If he would have believed her. If she even knew herself in that moment.

He never found out.

A black, unmarked SUV collided violently with the passenger side of their car before she could answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go.
> 
> I bet neither of them was expecting that…
> 
> I'm thinking only a few more chapters left in this story as Clint is – slowly but surely – getting her closer to joining S.H.I.E.L.D and that is where this story will end
> 
> …and its sequel continue.
> 
> If you would like to know more please keep reading.
> 
> Please also review if you liked it, or even if you didn't! All kind of reviews make a writer better – and I would love to become a better writer for you folks!


	6. But Our Story Was Not Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We have a kill on site order for the Black Widow." He said before raising his gun to her forehead. The other agents around him did nothing to stop him.
> 
> "NO!" Now it was Clint's turn to roar. "No! She has information! Information she's agreed to share! Just let me talk to Agent Coulson, he'll agree-"
> 
> "No." The agent replied, steadying the hand holding his gun and flexing his fingers. "She has a kill on site order – so we're going to kill her on site."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I present the next chapter full of spills, thills and more than it's far share of chills. Here's hoping you like it!
> 
> As per usual my sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!
> 
> Huge thank-you to 'Ookamisawa_Hikari' for commenting, reviews of any kind alway make by day!

'Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.' – Doctor Seuss

* * *

There was a period of nothingness for the few seconds after the car collided into them, a sense of weightlessness and the terrifying knowledge that that wasn't a good thing – that there was a much worse sensation coming when that oblivion ended.

As per usual, Clint was more right than he wanted to be.

When that oblivion faded, and the world came rushing back to him, the pain began to truly set in.

Their car was still rolling forcefully when Clint's senses caught up with him, crashing into the unforgiving road again and again until slowly they came to a halt with the car overturned, rocking precariously but finally grounded.

For the few seconds after his ears rung painfully and his eyes refused to focus, the after-effects of the abuse his senses had undergone not dissipating when the car stilled. It made deciphering what the hell was going on at little more difficult, but not impossible.

Clint wiggled slightly, testing his range of motion, while also checking for broken bones – the diagnosis was not great. His bullet wound was throbbing and no doubt bleeding again, head aching with pain only a pretty severe concussion could bring and one of his shoulders dislocated. Badly.

And the car hadn't even hit his side.

"Romanov, you alright?" He groaned, attempting to turn towards her despite being strapped upside-down to his seat by his seat belt. It didn't go so well, and she didn't answer. "Widow?" He asked again, more urgently, "Widow, can you hear m-"

" _Shut up_." Her voice at the best of times was chilling, but the alarmed hiss she spat in his direction was downright terrifying. Not once – despite having been attacked, shot at and blown up – had her calm façade broken. The annoyingly confident glint in her eyes had never faded despite Clint's efforts to intimidate and threaten her.

It was gone now though – and to Clint's astonishment he wished it weren't.

Because whatever frightened her, petrified him.

"Don't move." She hissed as Clint felt her attempting to move in her set, still as trapped as he was. From what Clint could make out of their car the passenger side had been almost completely crushed. He was surprised she was alive, let alone conscious.

The damage that had been done to them and the car seemed to be the least of her worries though as she continued. "You have to be quiet – be still – if she thinks you're dead she might leave you alone."

"Who-"

A hand suddenly shot out and seized the front of his shirt – a bloody, broken hand that grasped him with more strength than it really should have been able to. "You have to  _stay in the car_." She hissed, the fear in her voice making her sound younger. Like the child she probably was. "No matter what happens, stay in the car, and when she leaves you have to go for the case. It's on the third floor, apartment 33B." She whispered. Clint's ears had finally stopped ringing and he was able to make out the sound of approaching footsteps. Of glass crunching under heavy boots.

The Widow's next words were barely a murmur but they hit harder than all the others. The fear in them was infectious, and paralysing.

"If you fight, she will obliterate you."

They were also her last words.

A hand crashed through what was left of the passenger widow – spraying glass over both Clint and the Widow – before clasping a fistful of Romanov's red-hair and dragging her with incredible strength from the car. Clint heard her hit the glass-strewn road a moment later.

The sound broke his paralysis.

Despite his dislocated shoulder Clint managed to manoeuvre himself so that his uninjured arm could reach his seat belt and wrench it from the car wall. The satisfaction the small success brought was short lived as without the belt he fell painfully to the roof of the car, barely managing to keep himself from crying out in pain as he landed on his dislocated arm and – by the sound of the landing – broke it. He was about to crawl through the shattered windscreen when a paralysis set in once more.

Only this one wasn't caused by fear.

Clint hadn't noticed it before. The soft whistle, that resembled a kind hum, that echoed through the wrecked car. It was soothing at first. His ragged breathing calmed and his erratic heartbeat slowed. Even his pain lessened. He was able to crawl halfway through the windscreen with more strength than he realized he had, until he couldn't.

Until he couldn't move at all.

That soft whistle seemed to fill his very bones, rendering them heavier than lead. He collapsed forwards onto the road face first, unable to even get his hands up to break his fall. He was trapped, half way through the windscreen, a tingling settling in his spine that more terrifying than anything he had ever felt.

He was completely, and utterly, helpless.

He could, however, still see. His head had fallen in such a way that the Widow and whomever had wrenched her from the car were directly in his line of sight.

Or at least their feet were.

And somehow, despite having taken the brunt of the crash, the Widow was standing – or more accurately leaning – against the upturned car with the other woman barely an inch in front of her. Maybe even holding her up.

The whistle that echoed in Clint's ears hadn't faded, but he could still make out what they were saying. Or what the Widow was saying. The other woman never said a word in response.

"It's okay." The Widow whispered, the fear that Clint had heard in her voice still there but mixed with something else. Gentleness. A comforting softness that, unless he had heard it himself, he wouldn't have believed she was capable of.

For a disturbing second Clint thought that she was talking to him. That for some reason she was comforting him. Though considering that she had  _shot_  him earlier that week he really doubted it – and he found the tone and the words more disturbing than comforting.

It was when she spoke again that he began to suspect the words weren't meant for him. They were  _too_  soft. He could barely make them out, and his hearing was better than most.

And the whistling stopped.

"It's okay." The Widow repeated in a murmur. "Of all of them, I'm glad it's you." None of the mercenaries or assassins Clint and the Widow had met so far had seemed to harbour any friendly feelings towards the Widow. And she seemed to despise them even more. Clint hadn't imagined her capable of civility let alone friendship. Her next words proved him wrong. "Old friend," She whispered to the woman. Clint was beginning to believe that he hadn't given the Widow enough credit.

Her next words solidified that belief.

"Just leave him." The Widow implored. "Leave him and the case. I'd like to be able to say that I did at least one good thing in my life – spared one good life – I think I'm owed me that much." She said before she let out what sounded like a painful sigh. A longing tinted her next words. "Let me have that much."

The other woman remained silent, and for a moment Clint braced himself, sure that she was about to slit the Widow's throat and come for him. Despite that the whistling had stopped he still couldn't feel move his body, couldn't drag himself to his feet, or protect himself in any way. If she came for him, he was a dead man.

But she didn't.

In fact neither of them moved.

"It's okay." The Widow repeated again, softly. "We both knew this was coming. Just make it fast, will you?"

That was when the situation really set in for Clint. When he finally understood.

This woman was going to kill her.

And the Widow was  _letting her_.

"Until next time, old friend." The redhead said before breathing a quiet, dark, chuckle. "Maybe we'll share a pit down there."

Again there was silence. Or at least what he thought was silence. After a few seconds that earlier whistle became audible once more, steadily growing louder – only it didn't remain a whistle. The sound morphed around Clint, softening and soothing, until it became a lullaby.

Clint felt his consciousness slip away from him as the two women finally moved. He felt a body slam down into the glass beside him. Caught a glimpse of red hair splayed out on the road next to the car. Of a tall, looming, figure bending down into his line of sight.

A flash of a blade.

And then nothing.

* * *

That nothing didn't last all that long however, that much he could tell when he came around.

There was still glass underneath him, the smell of blood and metal around him and pain. Pain fucking  _everywhere_.

Yeah he definitely hadn't been out that long.

Some time had clearly passed though because instead of the whistling that had been present in his ears since the car crashed he could hear voices. Hear shouting. He and the Widow were no longer alone at the scene.

The  _Widow_.

The last few moments of his consciousness flooded back to him and he forced his eyes to open, to focus. He had to know if she was dead – the other woman had clearly been here to kill her and she had been doing very little to prevent that from happening the last time Clint saw. Had the other woman actually listened to her when the Widow had asked her to leave him and the case alone?

 _The case_.

Now he really needed to get his limbs to cooperate.

She had told him where it was, apartment 33B across from him, he just had to make it there. Just had to make it there and then back to Phil – because Phil would take care of this. Even furious and stressed as Clint was sure Phil was in that exact moment, Phil would take care of everything so long as Clint could get him the case.

Phil always took care of him.

Finally Clint did manage to pry his eyes open. He found himself exactly where he was when they had closed – half way through the windscreen of the car. Only now he could move.

It took more effort than Clint would have ever admitted but eventually he did manage to pull himself the rest of the way out of the car and stumble to his feet. The shouting he had heard was from a small circle of people that had surrounded the car but kept their distance. It seemed the attack on the consulate had made everyone a little cautious, not that Clint blamed them.

He scanned the crowd quickly, searching for anyone who looked particularly hostile but found nothing. The onlookers seemed to be genuine bystanders, meaning that Clint had mere minutes until the police and other emergency services made an appearance.

Limping heavily he made his way around the car, fully intent on sprinting across the street and into the apartment complex before the police could get their hands on him, but was brought to a halt almost immediately by what he found.

The Widow was still beside the car – lying where he had seen her fall, surrounded by blood.

He knew what protocall dictated. Knew that the case, and whatever was inside it, was undoubtedly important and arguably more dangerous.

But he  _had_  to know if she was alive.

There was no doubt in his mind that if she hadn't bargained for his life he wouldn't still be in possession of it – he couldn't just walk past her now.

"Romanov?" He urged kneeling down painfully beside her while locals stared at them. "Romanov? Can you hear me?" He pressed two fingers against the side of her throat, holding his breath. For a moment he could have sworn there was nothing – and then she spoke.

"It's  _Romanova_." She corrected weakly but with enough of her usual dryness that he couldn't help the chuckled that escaped his lips.

" _Jesus_ ," He breathed, pulling his hand back from her neck before she removed it for him. "I thought you were dead."

She didn't answer. Instead she lifted her head slightly and Clint, for the first time, took her in.

She looked fucking awful.

The car wreck had clearly left her worse off than him – not surprising seeing that the other car had smashed directly into her side – and whatever the other woman had done to her, it had not been kind. Her head was bleeding so profusely from so many different places that blood covered practically the entirety of her face, like some crude face painting, and her limbs were no better off. One arm looked so badly broken that each joint seemed to be bending the opposite way that they should have been.

Despite Clint's horror at her appearance, and the ungodly amount of pain she must have been in, her wounds seemed not to faze her. In fact she didn't seem to take any notice of them at all.

Her eyes snapped up to Clint's, more alert and coherent than he would have thought possible considering the state of her skull, before she spoke.

"We have to get out of here." She threw a glance around at the people milled about. "We should get the case and get out. The people coming for us monitor the emergency phone lines-"

She broke off as the sound of loud sirens broke through the shouts around them and several large, black SUV's rounded the corner before squealing to a stop mere feet from the wrecked car.

They had run out of time.

Only it wasn't the mysterious ' _these people_ ' that had found them.

It was S.H.I.E.L.D.

"PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM AND LAY FACE DOWN ON THE ROAD!" A booming voice commanded as scores of agents leapt from the SUV's. "NOW!" The same voice barked.

"Wait!" Clint called out, getting to his feet, putting his hands up for good measure – and so they didn't shoot him on the spot. "I'm Agent Barton, of the New York base, you can lower your weapons there's been a misunderstanding-"

"-WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE!" The voice boomed back – Clint couldn't make out exactly who was speaking due to the multiple head-lights from the SUVs that were currently trained on him and the Widow. "PUT YOUR HAND'S WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM AND GET  _ON THE GROUND_! WE WILL NOT ASK AGAIN!"

Clint blamed his exhaustion, and the fact that he had already been shot once on this mission, for his lack of what would have typically been a very heated argument. And if that didn't work, heated confrontation.

Instead he did as they asked, lowering himself to his knees and then to the ground, but still continued to reason with them. "No, look, listen, I've been running point on this mission with Agent Coulson – just call him and he'll sort this all out-"

"Agent Coulson is the man who ordered your apprehension." The man who had stalked forwards to cuff him replied, his voice still booming but no longer a shout.

"What? No!" Clint began to argue, shaking his head as he watched agents slap cuffs on an apparently nonchalant Romanov _a_  as well. "He wouldn't do tha-"

Clint froze mid-denial, because Phil would do that. Clint had run off – injured – without so much as a note  _hours_  ago and Phil had no doubt been searching for him that entire time.

Phil would  _definitely_  give an order like that if he thought it might keep Clint in one place long enough for him to reach him and drag his sorry ass back to New York, where Clint will no doubt face  _months_  of livid rants and the most boring surveillance missions of his career.

"Yeah, okay, he might have done that." Clint conceded as the agent hauled him by the cuffs to his knees, glass from the road digging into them painfully. "But you got this all wrong. I'm not an enemy. I'm an agent – albeit a dead one once Agent Coulson gets here – but I'm not a threat-" He cut of suddenly when the man beside him hauled Romanova to her feet and threw her several feet forwards – towards the other agents who had yet to lower their weapons.

"- _and neither is she_!" He spat, straining against his own captor.

The agent who had thrown the Widow looked back at him haughtily.

"We have a kill on site order for the Black Widow." He said before raising his gun to her forehead. The other agents around him did nothing to stop him.

" _NO!_ " Now it was Clint's turn to roar. "No! She has information! Information she's agreed to share! Just let me talk to Agent Coulson, he'll agree-"

"No." The agent replied, steadying the hand holding his gun and flexing his fingers. "She has a kill on site order – so we're going to kill her on site."

"YOU CAN'T!" Clint shouted, being purposefully too loud in hopes that the noise might put the agent off. "This isn't a regulation 'kill on site'! That would require her to be running, or fighting, OR ANYTHING ACCEPT KNEELING IN FRONT OF YOU, DEFENCELESS!" He shouted, furious. "IF YOU PULL THAT TRIGGER YOU'RE ENDING YOU CAREER!"

"As if." The agent scoffed. "They're going to give me a medal for putting a bullet through this bitch's forehead."

"NO!"

The sound of another SUV tearing around the corner caused both Clint and the gun totting, glory seeking, agent to look up. It, too, screeched to a stop just in front of them before Phil Coulson in the flesh threw open the driver's door and came storming towards them.

There had been many times in Clint's short life that he had been glad to see Phil Coulson.

Many, many times.

One such time being in Bangladesh when Clint was about to have certain body parts that he's  _very_  attached to removed by drug traffickers.

This, along with Bangladesh, made at least top five of those times.

" _Phil_!" Clint heaved in a breath of air, relief seeping through him. "Jesus, would you tell this  _idiot_  to put his fucking gun down!" He nodded towards where the Widow was still kneeling in front of the gun-friendly agent.

"I'll tell him to put his gun down when you tell me  _what the hell you're doing_!" Phil practically growled, completely ignoring the stand off in the middle of the road and stalking towards him. Thankfully though the other agent made no further move to shoot the Widow. Now that his boss was here it seemed he didn't have to balls to kill her in cold blood.

The same couldn't be said for Phil, however, who looked like he was about to rip Clint's head from his shoulders at any second.

"What  _the hell_  is wrong with you Clint?!" He growled, coming to a halt mere inches in front of the archer. "You run off from the infirmary – which you still haven't technically been released from – and into the hands of a homicidal maniac," he threw a wild hand behind him in the direction of Romanova. "Only to get into a massive car wreck  _hours_  after leaving said infirmary!"

Spittle was practically flying from the older man's mouth as he shouted – the agents around them looking away with trepidation in their eyes. None of them would be crossing Phil Coulson anytime soon that was for sure.

"In my defence," Clint wheezed, becoming more and more aware of his own broken arm and dislocated shoulder. "The car wreck wasn't exactly my idea."

That seemed to break through the pent up anger Phil had been building ever since Clint ditched him at the infirmary. All rage fled his expression immediately, to be replaced by wide eyes and apprehension. Clint wasn't naïve though. He knew that unpleasant conversation was far from over – merely postponed.

" _Jesus_  Clint," Phil sighed, leaning down to get a closer look at him as he spoke to the agent standing above them both. "Un-cuff him, now." The agent seemed like he couldn't obey fast enough. "And then give us a minute."

Clint was still rising shakily to his feet as the agent made his way over to the others and waited for further orders – only Phil didn't give any. He was still looking at Clint like he wanted nothing more than to reach out and steady him, but he knew Clint well enough to know the young archer would never let him. Not in front of so many others.

"Jesus Clint," Phil repeated, eyes raking over every inch of him. "What hurts? List em'-"

"-No Phil, listen," Clint cut him off. "You can't let them kill her!"

"Clint-" Phil began, his voice taking on a weary tone. The tone it always took when he knew he was about to enter into a fight with Clint.

"-She has information." Clint cut him off again, hurriedly. He was all too aware that the other agent had yet to lower his gun. "And she's willing to give it to us. She could be invaluable."

"Yeah, but at what cost?" Phil asked pointedly. "Did she say what the price for this information was?"

"No, but-"

This time it was Phil who cut him off. "There are no 'buts' Clint. Some people can't be negotiated with."

"How would you know?!" Clint again blamed his exhaustion for the outburst. "You haven't even tried yet!"  
"Let me guess," His handler replied, forcing himself to remain calm. "You offered her a place at S.H.I.E.L.D? A place where she would have access to  _huge_  amounts of invaluable information, of course she said she'd tell us what we want. She's playing you Clint!" That forced calm was quickly fading. "And maybe the information she gives us is real! It would still be nothing compared to what she could get from us!"

"For who?!" Clint demanded. "She's defected? Who the hell is she supposed to sell that information too?!"

" _Anyone_!" Phil's calm was long gone now. "Close your eyes and point on a map! There isn't a country on earth that wouldn't pay billions for S.H.I.E.L.D's secrets! Hell, half of America's covert services too!"

"She gave up the case." Clint refused to back down. "It's right behind you. Third floor, apartment 33B, of that building just there." He pointed behind them both, at the building across from them.

"Good," Phil said without turning, keeping his eyes fixed on Clint as his voice returned to normal and his expression softened. "And maybe what's in it is valuable, or maybe not, it doesn't matter." He said, much more gently now. "She's too much of a liability, Clint." Clint was ready to argue again but Phil cut him off before he could even get a word out, reading his thoughts like always. "-And I know that's not fair – that she didn't choose this life – but sometimes life it cruel. And so is S.H.I.E.L.D. We have to be."

Phil reached out, despite the audience behind them, and grasped his shoulder comfortingly. "I'm sorry, kid." And he sounded it too.

He released Clint's shoulder a moment later before turning back to the others and beginning towards them while Clint remained where he was, in too much pain to move and not wanting to be a part of what he knew was coming next. What he couldn't stop it seemed, despite his best efforts.

He looked down at the Widow – still on her knees before the gun-totting agent – and had to resist the urge to look away. He had brought her here, and now she was going to be killed, the least he could do was not look away. He had failed to get Phil to listen, to get anyone to listen, and now-

"Devyat!" He called, the word falling from his lips in a desperate last attempt. He had almost forgotten their conversation – her complete trust that that one word would save her – but he remembered now and he had nothing else left.

For a moment Clint thought that Phil hadn't even heard him, but eventually he turned slowly until he was once again facing Clint.

His expression was not one Clint saw often.

Astonishment.

" _What_?" He asked deliberately, taking one small step back towards Clint.

"Devyat." Clint repeated, hope rising in his chest as that one small step turned into several and Phil was in front of him once more.

"Where  _the hell_  did you hear that word?!" Phil breathed, eyes wider than Clint had ever seen them.

Clint waved a hand in Romanova's direction but refused to break eye contact with Phil. Not now that he was listening to him. "She said it to me. Said that it would make Fury listen – that she knew what it was."

"What did she tell you?!"

"Just that word." Clint said. "Nothing else." Phil looked back at the Widow uncertainly, and Clint followed his gaze. From where he stood she  _still_  looked awful, but she also looked young. Like the eighteen year old she probably was. "It's important, isn't it?" Clint pressed and Phil's gaze slowly returned to him. "Whatever it means, it's important."

"You have no idea." Phil breathed.

"Then you can't kill her." Clint surmised, keeping his eyes on Phil's every movement. The handler seemed ready to argue but instead threw another glance over his shoulder at the redhead, clearly unsure now. "Phil," Clint began, his voice taking on a pleading tone that he had never used with his handler before and Phil's attention snapped back to him at once. "I have never asked you for anything." He said imploringly. "But I am asking for this. As my friend, as my brother, don't kill her."

Later Phil wasn't sure what it was exactly that swayed his decision. He wasn't sure whether it was the information that they stood to gain, or Clint's request, or the way the archer's voice wavered slightly when he called the older man his brother, but after a moment of staring at the kid he merely nodded.

"Jaeger," Phil called to the agent still holding a gun to the Widow's forehead. "Holster your weapon."

* * *

"What the hell, Phil?!"

Fury's voice had hit an octave that Phil hadn't heard in it in some time – and it was usually reserved for when Clint did something especially aggravating.

Like this.

"I know," Phil sighed running an exhausted hand across his face and through his hair.

" _You know_!" Fury shouted through the phone, somehow managing to seem just as commanding and infuriated from halfway across the planet. "What do you  _know_ , Phil? Because right now all  _I know_  is that you and Barton clearly don't understand the terms 'target' and 'assassination'!"

"Devyat." Phil said evenly, predicting the sharp silence that followed the word. "She knows about Devyat."

"What?"

"She has information, Nick." He said, feeling as if he were parroting Clint's words from only a few hours ago.

Phil had been stalking up and down the hallways of the Berlin Base infirmary for three hours now, working up the nerve to call Fury and not willing to be more than twenty feet from Clint – who was currently heavily sedated in the room right across from him and unlikely to be waking anytime soon. The doctors had reset his dislocated arm, put it in a cast, and stitched closed his head wound before drugging him into oblivion. They, too, were less than impressed with his Houdini act earlier that morning.

The Black Widow on the other hand was locked down tight in the underground cells beneath the base. She had refused medical treatment despite looking like she had gone fourteen rounds with a monster truck, and none of the doctors had really pushed it on her. They were more than happy to keep a whole lot of distance between themselves and the Widow, not that Phil really blamed them. He'd be lying if he said that he too hadn't been hesitant around her. The only person who wasn't was Clint, and Phil found that less than comforting – it was just another reason why guarding the door to Clint infirmary room seemed like a good idea. He didn't want the kid anywhere near her right now.

Phil's blood pressure was high enough as it was.

"If what she's saying is true then she knows about Devyat," Phil went on. "Knows what it is?"

" _If_  what she is saying is true." Fury repeated pointedly. "Which we have no proof of, unless she's told you anything that you can confirm?"

"She hasn't said anything." Phil admitted. "Said she wont say anything until she's face to face with you."

"How convenient."

"Listen," Phil insisted, throwing a glanced into Clint's room as he paced past it – the kid was still out cold. "I don't trust her either, but I also don't think she's lying. She knows  _something_ Nick, something important. Call it a hunch or whatever you want, but I'm sure of it."

"Would that be your hunch or Barton's that you're so sure of?" Fury was not the head of the most covert organisation in the world for nothing. He had an uncanny ability to just  _know_  things – especially when it came to his agents.

Phil didn't bother answering. They both knew whose hunch it really was.

"When has the kid ever been wrong?" Phil asked instead.

"There is a first time for everything, Phil." Fury cautioned.

"Yeah, well, let's hope it's not this time." Phil said.

Phil could almost hear the frustration in Fury's following silence. Hear his reluctance to allow Romanova anywhere near his base.

But in the end all the reluctance and frustration in the world didn't matter. Fury was a spy – and there was nothing that a spy wouldn't risk for possible Intel they needed.

That didn't mean he had to like the risk.

"This woman better know the god-damn secrets to the Universe, Phil."

Phil glanced into Clint's room one more time, taking in the state of his agent and recalling his desperation to get Romanov this far despite everything she'd done. Despite that she had  _shot him_.

For some unfathomable reason he truly believed in her, and whatever she knew.

And Phil, for better or worse, believed in Clint.

"I think she just might." Phil said.

"Well in that case." Fury relented – sounding like he regrated this decision already. "Bring them on home, Phil."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it! She's in...sort of…and they're on their way home!
> 
> And Clint is back in the infirmary….again!
> 
> There will be some pretty huge reveals in the next chapter – which is likely to be the last in this particular story – and we shall finally understand what the hell's been going on!
> 
> Please review and tell me what you thought! Make some guesses as to what you think Natasha's answers might just be! And any tips that might improve both the story and my writing!
> 
> Reviews are as inspiring as they are heartening!


	7. I'll Be Home In A Little While

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I hope you're ready to be much more chatty because he's not nearly as talented at annoying people into speaking as I am." Clint went on, much more firmly. She needed to understand what was on the line. "And things will not end well for either of us if that conversation isn't all its been made out to be."
> 
> "I'm ready. And it is." She said, her voice unwaveringly sure. He didn't know if that surety made him feel better or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual my sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!  
> A huge thanks to 'Ookamisawa_Hikari' and 'stefaniegk' for leaving comments! You guess are beautiful human beings who absolutely make my day!

"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it." - Orson Scott Card

* * *

"Watch your step." Phil said from beside Clint, where he was gripping the archer's arm to steady him as he walked. "The ramp's just up ahead."

"You know my eyes weren't actually damaged in the crash." Clint said sarcastically, "In fact most people have commented that they are really quite something – better than most. Hawk-like one might even say?" He smirked, attempting to pull away slightly only to have Phil grip tighter as he lead him out of the quin-jet and into the New York Base hanger.

Any other day Phil would have let Clint pull away, respected his ingrained desire to be independent to the point of stupidity, but not today apparently. Clint had had a feeling the older man would be hovering overbearingly for years after this mission – to keep Clint in his sight  _and_  because he knew how much it frustrated the him.

To Clint it was a punishment all on its own, and Phil knew that more than anyone.

What frustrated Clint to no end though, was the fact that there was shit-all he could do about it except grin and bear it – because this particular bout of stony glares and hovering he had brought on himself.

"But you're right," Clint backed up immediately at the glare Phil sent him. "There was a step, thank-you," He said but the glare didn't fade. "A large one." He went on, trying his best at civility and failing miserably. "Your observations are always welcome, my most valued handler. Treasure of my life. The reason I get up in the morning-"

"Alright that's enough." Phil groaned leading them both through the twisting hallways of the base and towards the infirmary.

"You forgive me?" Clint asked hopefully.

"Not even close." Phil replied dryly. "But listening to you try and apologise is painful, so I'll settle for a silent reflection of your wrong-doings over the past few days."

"Aye, aye Overwatch." Clint sighed.

Yep. He was going to be apologising for this one until he died.

Which may be sooner than he'd hoped. Apparently the Counsel were  _less than pleased_  – which Clint had discovered to be S.H.I.E.L.D's way of saying that they were once again looking for any excuse to have him executed.

He suddenly felt a lot less safe than he had five minutes ago when they were landing. Truth be told he'd take an entire organisation of mysterious, Russian assassins over the Council any day.

At least he was allowed to hit them back when they attacked him.

"I wanna see Romanova," Clint said, coming to halt so suddenly that Phil had to back-track a couple of steps before he was eye to eye with him again.

"She's being escorted down to holding," Phil argued. "And Fury's probably given the order that  _no one_  talk to her before he gets a chance too."

"You don't need to talk to her," Clint reasoned. "I just want to see her."

"Why?" Phil demanded, his patience far below its typical level due to the stress of the last few days. "You don't trust that I haven't had her shanked?"

"I trust you," Clint said, his voice taking on a seriousness that his other apologies had lacked. This was one thing he knew that Phil doubted at the moment, and also the only thing that the older man should never  _have_  to doubt. Clint trusted Phil more than himself. "It's everyone else on this bloody base I'm worried about." He said.

"You are supposed to check into the infirmary," Phil said, but Clint could tell he was wavering.

"I'm  _fine_." Clint argued only to be sent the most heated glare so far and backtrack immediately. "But I'll check in later, let them look me over. I swear."

"And you'll do it without complaint," Phil added. "Even if they say they want to admit you. You'll do  _exactly_  what they say and for the first time in you damn life  _not_ cause trouble?"

"I'll be as gracious as a Politian in election week, I swear." Clint smirked and Phil tilted his head in relent. "Thank-you, Phil, I'll be right back-"

"-Oh hell no," Phil cut him off, grabbing a hold of Clint's uninjured arm before he could run off. "The last three times you tangled with her alone you wound up unconscious. If you want to go see her – I'm coming."

Clint was about to argue heatedly – he was twenty-bloody-one he didn't need a baby-sitting on his own fucking base – but looking a Phil he knew where arguing would get him right now.

And it was not down into the containment cells where he wanted to be

"Fine." He sighed, taking what he could get. "But you're waiting outside. She's shy enough without adding people that wanted the execute her in the middle of the street to the conversation."

"Yeah," Phil replied cynically as he followed Clint along S.H.I.E.L.D's winding corridors – away from the infirmary – and towards the guarded staircase that would lead them to the cells, all to aware of the young archer's painful looking limp. "Shy is probably not the adjective I would use to describe her at the moment."

* * *

The guards standing at the top of the staircase that descended into the cells were none too happy to see the two of them, but some choice words from Phil had both the handler and Clint on their way down without too much hassle. Clint couldn't deny that having Phil with him was helpful. The man practically ran the New York base and getting down to see the Widow would have been a lot more difficult – and possibly violent – without him.

But that was where the older man's helpfulness was going to end.

"I need you to wait here." Clint said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and Phil's reaction was exactly what he had expected. Fervent disagreement. Before he could verbalize that though Clint spoke again, more compellingly. "Look she's not going to say anything with you around, and I don't blame her. Your first impression was not great."  
"My apologies for not being my typically perky and polite self when confronting the woman that tried to kill you. Twice."

"Well I forgive you, but she might need a little more time." Clint said. "Just give me two minutes."

"Fine." Phil agreed reluctantly. "But she stays in the cell, and I'm serious about that."

"The woman shot me Phil," Clint threw Phil an exasperated look as he descended the last few stairs. "I'm not about to let her out for a hug."

The stairs ended at the beginning of a long, narrow and impeccably white corridor.

Even years after the first time he had seen the cells Clint couldn't get over how  _clean_  they were. To him secret government holding cells should be grungy and covered in spider-webs, but S.H.I.E.L.D evidently didn't agree.

The cells were as modern as they could possibly be.

Hell, they didn't even have bars.

Phil had tried to explain what exactly the walls baring the cells from the rest of the corridor were made of – some kind of electric current that had the ability to fry prisoners if they got too close – but the technical explanation had gone straight over even his head. Which didn't happen all that often.

Needless to say, they were impressive, but Clint couldn't help but wish for bars.

There was something so eerie about the invisible barrier. An irrational fear in the back of his mind that the Widow might reach right through and strangle the life out of him.

Something that he wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't do if given the chance.

That fear though dissipated when he finally caught sight of her.

She had been locked in a cell about half way down the corridor, left bloody, broken and looking like she couldn't stand let alone pose a threat. Someone clearly hadn't agreed though because the handcuffs they had secured around her wrists in Germany were still there despite that she was locked away in arguably the most secure building in the world.

She sat, cross-legged, on the cement floor in the middle of the bare cell looking smaller than he had ever seen her. Small and  _exposed_.

She was vulnerable here – and if the tension in shoulders told him anything, it was that she was all too aware of that fact.

"You still look like crap." He said and her head snapped up, staring at him through the invisible wall and giving him a clear view of her face. Or what was probably a face – he couldn't tell due to the blood that was covering  _ever inch of it_. The accident had clearly done more damage to her than him. More of her limbs looked broken than not.

"The doctors here can be tools, I'll give you that, but they aren't too bad when it comes to cracked skulls." He went on, slipping his hands into his pockets and doing his best to seem casual. "You can cite me on that too, I've had my fair share." She did nothing but stare evenly at him coolly, not moving to answer at all. "So," He nodded slowly, waiting for some kind of response and getting nothing but more steely silence. "It's going to be one of  _those_  conversations, but that's fine." He glanced up and down the corridor awkwardly, starting to feel more than a little uncomfortable under her stare. "I just thought I'd come down and make sure they hadn't thrown you out of the plane half way here-"

"When will he see me?"

Her sudden question caught him off guard, "Fury?" He asked before answering, not waiting for a confirmation that wasn't likely to come. "Soon probably." He said, earlier tension returning at the thought of that particular conversation. If she didn't have the valuable information she claimed then things were going to end very badly, for her and for him. The Council had been waiting for a chance to have him thrown back out onto the streets – and bringing her in would be excuse enough if all went to hell. "I hope you're ready to be much more chatty because he's not nearly as talented at annoying people into speaking as I am." Clint went on, much more firmly. She needed to understand what was on the line. "And things will not end well for either of us if that conversation isn't all its been made out to be."

"I'm ready. And it is." She said, her voice unwaveringly sure. He didn't know if that surety made him feel better or not.

Clint nodded again, content that she seemed to want this as much as he needed her too. That was a start. "You should at least wash your face, though," He said, looking over at her again. "You look like Carrie." Her blank expression didn't change. "Carrie? The horror movie?" He said again, receiving nothing more than a slightly more confused cold stare. "Nothing – really?" He exclaimed, surprised, before sighing and making his way back towards the staircase and Phil. "You know what," He called back to her. "If they let you live, I'll get you a copy. It can be your welcome to the Agency gift."

"Look," Clint twirled gracefully and dramatically as he reached the step below where Phil had been standing at the base of the staircase, waiting for him to return. "Not even a scratch. I'll have her domesticated in no time." The kid joked.

Phil couldn't even bring himself to smile.

"Clint," Phil began, staring down at the archer hesitantly, hating what he was about to say already. Hating the argument he knew was inevitable. "You might have to start preparing yourself for the possibility that Fury won't agree to this."

All humour left Clint in seconds.

"Then you have to make him, Phil." He said firmly, not willing to accept anything but an agreement, just as Phil had known he would. "She could do so much here – and she wants to. She does-"

"-Clint-" Phil cut him off, caution clouding his tone as he moved down a step so that he and Clint could be face to face.

"-Phil you didn't hear her in Germany." Clint ploughed on, not letting the older man keep him from saying what he needed to. "She wants another chance."

"She shot you." The words were no joke or quip this time. They were a truth that Phil didn't take lightly. And probably never would no matter how many times it happened. "That doesn't strike me as something that someone does when they're looking for a second chance."

"I haven't forgotten that, believe me, I'm still pretty pissed off about it." Clint fumed, eyes burning as he spoke. "I don't like her, Phil, and I don't trust her, but that doesn't mean she can't be better." He went on just as heatedly. "She  _chose_  this." He argued pointedly, waving a hand behind him at the containment cells just beyond the staircase. "She chose to come here with me when she didn't have to. She could have killed me a thousand times over and just slipped away." The fire in him dulled a little as he stared at Phil, took in his strained expression. He must have been able to see that Phil man was trying, that he really did want to understand. With a sigh the kid went on, more calmly. "Her life – how she was – it was chosen for her, and killing her for a choice that wasn't hers isn't fair."

For some time Phil said nothing at all. Just stared at Clint and the complete conviction in his eyes. It made the handler's next words almost painful to say, because Phil wanted that world. Wanted Clint's fair and just world.

But it didn't exist. And Clint needed to see that before his belief got him killed.

"Some people are just beyond saving, Clint."

Clint's answer was as swift as it was predictable. "You could have said that about me three years ago."

"You hadn't been trained to kill since you were an infant – which is what we're beginning to think was the case with her." Phil argued dejectedly. He hated that he had to argue at all, because he agreed with the kid completely. It wasn't fair.

It just didn't matter.

"Phil-"

"-Why is this so important you?" The question tumbled from Phil's lips before he could stop it. His desperation to understand whatever was going on in the kid's head prompting him to push more than he usually would. Making him risk Clint shutting down on him altogether.

Which for a moment Phil thought he had.

Clint's eyes darkened at the words, and some of that conviction that had been so clear only moments ago dulled. He was closing off and Phil could see it. Protecting himself the only way he knew how – by keeping  _everyone_  out.

Or at least, he began to.

His blue eyes flickered behind him for just a second – towards the cells – and when they returned to Phil's that conviction was back along with something else.

Resolve.

"You asked me why I can't just let go of what I've done. Of what I was." He said evenly, "It's because – in the moment –it didn't  _feel_  any different." There was hint of desperation in voice that Phil hadn't heard in a long time. Before he could say anything to fix it though Clint was speaking again, cutting him off. "I know, I know, that it is. That I do save lives. Logically I know." The kid assured him animatedly and Phil couldn't help but nod forcefully because that was something Clint had to know. Something he had worked for Clint to see. Clint's next words though left him with a knot in his gut and knowledge that maybe he hadn't succeeded. "But in the moment," Clint went on. "I'm still a killer. I don't get to see the lives I save, Phil, I just see the long list of people whose lives I've ended getting longer." He said bleakly.

"Clint, that's not-"

"-That woman who came to kill us," Clint cut him off firmly, staring at Phil with his earlier conviction burning in his eyes. "The Widow asked her to spare me. To let her die knowing that she'd saved a life. Even if only one." To say the words caught the Handler of guard would have been a very severe understatement.  _She had bartered for Clint's life?_ Now he really did feel a little bad about nearly shooting her in the street.

"I want that too Phil," Clint implored. "I want to spare a life. I want to know that I still can." That desperation was back. "Want to know that I've changed. To see – with my own eyes – that I'm more than a trigger finger. More than a killer."

There was a moment of silence in which neither of them knew what to say.

"I'll talk to Fury." Phil said finally. And he meant it.

Clint had seen himself her – seen the goodness that Phil saw everyday – and he would be damned if he let that slip away. Let the kid become blind to his humanity again.

"Thank-you, Phil."

* * *

Nick had been remanded in the council chamber for over three hours now while the council screamed back and forth. He hadn't said a word himself in over two of those hours as previous experience had taught him that they didn't actually want to know what he was doing about the problem.

They just wanted to yell about the problem.

"-this is utterly outrageous." One particularly vocal member hissed, his expertly trimmed moustache practically quivering with rage. "This girl is everything we have built this organisation to stand against!"

Nick said nothing, though this time it wasn't due to his utter lack of interest in the council's futile yelling session. Maria Hill had appeared on the other side of the glass door that separated him from the rest of the base and stared at him for a moment before nodding her head slightly to the left – in the direction of his office.

He didn't need her to say anything more.

 _Romanova is ready in your office_.

"-her even being here defies the very nature of this establishment-"

"-the nature of this establishment," He cut off the blonde council woman who looked just about ready to reach through her screen and strangle someone. "Is to gather information." He said tonelessly. "And that is exactly what this girl offers by being here. So if you will excuse me I am going to go and find out exactly how valuable that information is."

He ended the call without so much as a glance up at what he knew would be several furious faces. Instead he merely flicked the switch that disconnected power to the screens and swept through the glass door that lead to the hall.

"Keep everyone out of my office," He said without stopping and Hill fell into step with him easily. "I don't want to be interrupted – I don't care if it is Lenz demanding his sixteenth update this hour."

"Done." Hill said - ever to the point – as they rounded one last corner and through the open door of his office where an entire team of fully armed S.H.I.E.L.D agents stood in a loose circle around the redheaded assassin.

She sat stoically in the seat in front of his desk looking nothing short of abysmal. Dry blood clung to practically ever part of her except her face, which looked as if she had scrubbed it clean in a rush.

"Un-cuff her," He said from the doorway and the closest agent moved forwards immediately to remove the cuffs. "And leave us." They filed out of the room immediately and Hill closed the door behind them without another word, leaving him and Romanova alone.

The silence was deafening.

"I assume I don't have to tell you what will happen if your information isn't all that you've claimed it to be." Nick said calmly as he moved passed her and around his desk to stand beside the window, crossing his arms behind his back and looking down on the rest of the base.

"Ask," She replied, bleakly. "And find out."

He didn't need to be told twice. "Is it real?" Nick asked. "Devyat? The Nine?" He said without facing her, hands clenching. "Do they really exist?"

Despite that he had known what the answer would be, deep down, he still wasn't ready to hear it. Wasn't ready to accept what it meant.

That it would change everything.

"Yes."

Her answer was short, dry and unwavering.

He nodded slowly, staring down at the base to hide his expression because even he couldn't help the scowl that settled upon his lips at her words. "Is that an educated guess, or have you heard the rumours of supercharged assassins running around the world as well?" He asked cynically, not really expecting an answer from her but needing to say something. Her acknowledgment of his fears had soured his already fowl mood severely.

So when she did answer it was enough to make him turn towards her for the first time since he had started speaking.

"I've seen them."

His brow shot up as he took her in, still sitting in the chair in front of his desk with a scowl that matched his own firmly in place. Though he couldn't tell if the scowl was due to the conversation or the enormous amount of pain she must have been in from the accident.

Probably both.

"You've seen people who have been injected?" He clarified, staring at her intently. Assessing every micro-expression for a hint that she was lying to him. "You've seen what the serums can do first-hand?" He asked.

"I've witnessed the damage they can do on multiple occasions, yes." She replied disdainfully, but again he could decipher the cause of the distain. Whether it was him or the thought of the serums themselves.

The girl was harder to read than even Barton. And that was saying something.

"But they do work?" He asked taking a small step towards her. Drawn in by the possibility that what she was saying was true. "What reports have said they can do, it's true?" He repeated. "They've built on Erskine's original formula, made a new serum?"

"Yes. Nine of them." She explained, looking him in the eye unwaveringly. "Each with a different affect." She went on evenly, her expressionless-ness getting on his nerves somewhat. He had a feeling that even if she were lying, he wouldn't be able to tell. And that was frustrating beyond all belief.

He was about to ask another question when she spoke again, her voice deepening into a dark hiss. "Though none of them as  _nice_  as Erskine's."

"What is that supposed to mean?"  
"Erskine wanted to create a super-soldier," She went on, the scowl he had seen before firmly back in place on her lips. "A shield to protect children, and puppies and all the goodness in the world." She drawled scathingly, her opinion of the world's goodness evident in the eye roll that followed the words she clearly didn't believe in. "Someone with the potential the end wars." She said, more solemnly, before continuing. "The people who made these," She looked away from him for the first time to nod at the desk in front of her, and the metal case that lay upon that desk – the very same case that had been recovered with both her and Barton. "Wanted to start them."

Nick took another few steps forward until he could settle a hand over the case. "And this is…" He began.

"Seven." She said.

He wasn't sure if he had been expecting that answer ever since the techs told him that for some unfathomable reason they  _still_  hadn't been able to open it, or if he was completely caught off guard.

"One of the nine serums  _is in this case_?" He seethed, glaring down at her.

"Yes." She said, slowly and contemptuously. "The seventh serum." She repeated dryly.

"Why did Arkady Yozhikov have it?" Nick snapped, his already fowl mood not appreciating being mocked.

To her credit she didn't even falter despite his evident annoyance, like most did. Her next words were just as calm and dry as the last. "He's one of the leading bio-chemists in Eastern Europe," She explained, staring up at him both steadfastly and coolly. "He had a hand in developing the serums – particularly seven. He was transferring the case for the 'Devyat' program." She paused for a moment, her head tilting slightly as she considered her next words "They've been having some, ugh….real estate issues."

Nick nodded. "Are you referring to the incident eight months ago when five square miles of underground bunkers in the north of Russia burnt to the ground so completely and ferociously that it took four days for the flames to die out – and when they did there was nothing left but a creator the size of small city in an otherwise deserted artic wasteland?"

"Yes I am." She said without missing a beat, her slight rising of her tone suggesting that she wasn't at all dismayed with that particular event. "That was one of their facilities."

" _One_  of their facilities?" He repeated harshly, arms crossing over his chest as he stared down at her from his position beside the desk – barely a foot from where she was seated. "How many are there?"

"I only the know that half a dozen or so that I was raised and trained in." She answered. "But from what I can tell there are a lot more." She revealed, appearing as unhappy with the information as he felt. "All over the world."

Her evident distain for the people she had just openly admitted to raising her sparked even more questions.

Who were they? Why her? What had they done to loose her faith in them?

Instead, though, he asked only one.

"Why did  _you_  want the case so badly?" He asked, settling his hand back on the case as he loomed over her.

"I knew how valuable it was to them." She explained, her eyes fixed on it, and her expression once again unreadable. "Trade it for my freedom." She went on. "But your Agent Barton was right," She sighed and Nick couldn't help his double take at the admittance. She didn't acknowledge it however and went on. "I would never have been free. Not really."

He nodded slowly, sure that there was a story behind that statement but putting off asking for another time. He was hesitant to get into her personal information before he had gotten everything else he wanted, and in that moment there was much more he needed to know – but one thing in particular.

"Did the other serums survive the fire?" He asked firmly.

He needed to know what they were dealing with.

"As far as I know, yes." She answered at once, "Those that were still alive at least."

His brow shot up again, though this time in confusion. "How exactly can a serum 'die'?" He asked. His knowledge of biology wasn't great but he knew the basics.

"The serum themselves can't," She clarified, staring at him as if what she was about to say was completely obvious rather than the brand-new and monumental information that it was. "But their hosts can."

" _Hosts_?" He repeated slowly, already sure that he wasn't going to like whatever she was about to say.  
"'Devyat', or 'the nine' – whatever you want to call it – isn't actually a reference to the serums." She said, slowly, her own brow furrowing at his clear confusion. "You know that, don't you?" She asked, eyes widening slightly at the realization that he had no idea what she was talking about sunk in.

"Explain" Nick ordered.

He didn't enjoy having no idea about  _anything_.

"You know that that case is essentially a outrageously expensive desk ornament." She said waving a hand towards the metal case he hadn't removed his own hand from. At his still confused expression she shook her head, incredulously, and finally explained. "By now you've probably realized that can't open it, and even if you could the serum inside is absolutely useless to you." She revealed. "Erskine developed his serum to adapt to the human body, and that very concept is what has proven to be the most difficult aspect of re-creating that serum because no one has been able to make a serum compatible to the human body. It's also why majority that try end up poisoning themselves and dying horrible, painful deaths."

"So what makes these different?" Nick asked at once.

"Nothing. If you or I were injected with it we would die horrible and painful deaths because it's not compatible to us." She said, but at the sight of his quickly heating expression she explained with more depth. "The people who created 'Devyat' couldn't solve how Erskine had made his serum compatible to the human body, so they stopped trying. Instead of creating a serum  _for_  humans they attempted to create a serum  _from_  a human. They took nine human hosts and they mutated them, unmade them in a sense, and then bound their genetic markers into the base of their serums so that the two would be perfectly compatible. It took years, and they mutilated children because of their more adaptive physiology, but it did work. The serums work – just only on one person. The host. Without the host they're useless." She illuminated, her eyes falling back to the case as she spoke. "And vice-versa. The serums aren't permanent so without fairly regular injections the host is also useless." She said, before considering the words and adding, "Well, at least as useless as highly trained assassins can be." She altered.

After a moment in which neither of the said a word she spoke again, dragging her eyes from the case and to his as she gave one last clarification. "'Devyat' itself is not the serums – they are merely a means to an end – 'Devyat' is the hosts. Nine people with the individual capability to bring the world to its knees."

Nick wasn't sure whether he was relieved that not just anyone could take the serums and wreck havoc, or horrified because somewhere out there were nine people that had been transformed into the perfect weapons.

Steve Rogers alone had ended a war.

He didn't even want to imagine what  _nine_  of them do if they were all together.

"And this case contains the seventh host's serum?" Nick clarified once more as he worked to process everything she was saying.

"Yes." She repeated. "Spontaneous Tissue Regeneration."

Nick's jaw clenched to forcefully that he was surprised his teeth didn't shatter.

" _Super-healing_?" He spat, his vague knowledge of biology enough to know what Spontaneous Tissue Regeneration was – and that it never ended well.  
"Essentially." She conceded.

Fan- _fucking_ -tastic.

"There is literally someone out there who they have altered to be  _un-killable_?" He roared, not sure if he was yelling at her or the case as he was still staring at it while he spoke. Eyeing it accusingly.

"Only when they've been injected with that serum." She amened, her eyes too fixed on the case. "But yes, essentially. I did warn you, these serums aren't like Erskine's." She repeated, staring at the case expressionless. "They're gory and they're cruel. And their host's are barely even human anymore."

Nick stood suddenly and strode back to the window, staring out over the base again while trying his best to process.

He had been praying that the rumours had been wrong. That 'Devyat' was nothing more a story. There were plenty of them after all. Stories of mutant soldiers and monsters on battlefields that the survivors made up to explain the atrocities they saw.

But this one, this story had always seemed  _too_  real.

The first time he had heard it – over five years ago – at the scene of a massacre in Kenya it had seemed like all the others. Another story of mutated monsters made to explain all the evil in the world.

But then he had heard it again several months later in Prague.

And then years later in  _Missouri_.

Always the same story.

Extraordinary people with the ability to do terrible things.

"Did that information prove to be all I claimed it would?"

Romanova's words broke through his musings and he turned to face her again, staring down at her evenly but not answering.

"And what about you, Miss Romanova?" He asked. "You haven't said anything about yourself. Where you come from? Whom you worked for?" He pressed. Now he had his answers about 'Devyat' he wanted answers about her, and he was ready to push for them.

To his surprise though, he didn't have to.

"I was a part of a program similar to 'Devyat'." She said without hesitation, her voice and expression completely void of all emotion. "It enhanced the physical and mental abilities of children who were then raised and trained to be-"

"-Beautiful, psychotic mass-murderers." Nick cut in, "We've had some experience with the Black Widow program before. A long time ago."

She nodded, jaw tight, but didn't continue. She was silent for so long that he began to think she might not go on at all, but before he could prompt her too she spoke.

"They don't call it that." She said reluctantly.

"Call it what?" He asked, moving away from the window and toward his desk once more before finally settling into his seat behind it, ready for what he was sure would be a long and not particularly pleasant story.

"The program." She clarified tensely. "My program."

"What do they call it then?"

"The Red Room Program."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUH DUH DUHHHHHHHHH
> 
> So…how'd I do?
> 
> I know this isn't a typical comic plot – in fact 'Devyat' is something of my own creation – but it was what I built the entire story (and all the stories to come) around because I just couldn't get it out of my head.
> 
> And trust me when I say it gets A LOT more complex …. 
> 
> But please more than anything tell me what you think of my 'Devyat' story line? I'm not sure if people like original ideas that stray from the comic genius so give me your thoughts so that I can do my best to make it as good as I can!


	8. Lover, I'll Be Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know, you could help me," Phil suggested. "Seeing that her being here and my subsequent paperwork is all your fault."
> 
> "No can do." Clint said matter-of-fact-ly as he exited out onto his floor of the residential building. "Doctor said to take it easy for a few days. No strain what-so-ever."
> 
> "Paperwork is a strain, is it?" Phil deadpanned.
> 
> "No, but the constant desire to neck myself whilst doing it is a strain to resist." Clint smirked. "And besides, I do all the hard work around here anyway. All you have to do is document how cool I am."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are the Epilogue! Something that I had thought would be no more than 1000 words which (in typical writers fashion) became 4000 words.
> 
> My sincerest apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I wrote this on my own and don't have a beta so mistakes are inevitable. Feel free to pull me up on them in reviews!
> 
> A huge thank you to 'bandb4ev', 'stefaniegk' & 'Ookamisawa_Hikari' for commenting! You guys make writing worthwhile and life always much, much better!

'We know what we are, but not what we may be.' - William Shakespearere

* * *

"She's in."

The phone that Clint was holding loosely to his ear while one of the S.H.I.E.L.D medics prodded his already inflamed bullet wound. "What?!" He barked disbelievingly, startling the doctor in front of him and causing him to send another heated glare in Clint's direction. It was at least the fifteenth glare he'd earned in the seven minutes since Clint had been herded into an examination room for his post-mission check over.

"She's in." Phil's voice echoed across the phone, the disbelief in his tone matching Clint's sudden speechlessness. "Fury just called me. He's been in a meeting with her for over two hours and apparently whatever she had to say, it was enough."

"WHAT?!" Clint repeated, even louder than the first time as his shock got the better of him.

The doctor didn't even bother glaring this time. Instead he merely threw the blood-pressure cuff he had just removed from Clint's arm back onto the table of equipment before stalking out of the room with the samples of blood he had taken. Clint and the medical staff on base, despite Phil's contrary belief, had a very good and functioning relationship that Clint had applied copious amounts of effort to develop.

When he was forced to spend time in the Medical Clinic they avoided him as much as humanly possible, and when he wasn't forced to visit the sterile hallways  _he_  did everything humanly possible to keep it that way.

To Clint it was a win-win.

Phil disagreed but that was neither here, nor there.

"What the hell did she say?!" Clint went on hurriedly sitting up from where he had been stretched out on a cot and attempting to pull his shirt back on while keeping the phone to his ear, not wanting to miss a word.

"I have no idea." Phil said incredulously. "The Director is keeping everything that was said in that meeting very close to the belt. And I literally can't think of  _anything_ _at all_  that might have swayed him enough to let her stay."

"Bloody  _hell_ ," Clint muttered still only halfway dressed having given up trying to manoeuver the hand that held the phone through his shirt. "She's in." He repeated Phil's words with equal amounts of incredulity, as he remained seated on the infirmary cot.

As much as he had fought for her and hoped that Fury might be persuaded he really hadn't had much faith that they would make good on his promise to her, and the knowledge that he had most likely brought her here to be executed had been eating at him for hours.

"You did it Clint," Phil's voice still held a hint of his initial disbelief but it was fading, almost as if he had expected this outcome despite the odds. Maybe he had. The older man had learned not to bet against him a long time ago. "I hope she wants this as much as you think she does." Phil cautioned.

"She does." Clint said, strongly, finally pulling the phone away from his ear long enough to get the rest of his shirt on and rising from the cot. As he rose he couldn't help the slight gnawing in his stomach that now had nothing to do with the possibility of her execution.  _Dear, god, I hope she does_ , he prayed.

Phil broke him from his thoughts. "Well, for now, Fury seems to agree." He said. "But she's still on probation. She had to pass the training and initiation."

"You really think that the Black Widow is going to fail S.H.I.E.L.D training." Clint said mockingly as he high-tailed his way out of the infirmary as fast as his legs would take him.

He'd gone, the doctors had pocked at him, stayed at least five minutes and had been a delightful enough patient – to him that meant his deal with Phil was square.

"You remember that prick Mitchel, the guy who flunked his physical twice and  _still_  after three years can't assemble an automatic rifle," Clint went on making his through SH.I.E.L.D's back hallways, not feeling up to the stares he was likely to earn if he strolled through the common areas. "He passed."

"Point taken." Phil agreed.

"She's going to be great, Phil." Clint said, not quite sure who he was meant to be assuring, Phil or himself. "Hell, she's already better than me."

" _Really_?" If Phil's voice had been incredulous earlier in the conversation it was nothing compared to the astonishment in his voice now.

"Well maybe," Clint amended with a smirk, using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear while he picked the lock to the maintenance staircase that would lead directly to his room. "A little. If she's lucky."

"That sounds more like you." Phil snickered affectionately as Clint eased himself into the stairwell and began to climb to his floor. "Look, I got to go. The mountain of paperwork this debacle has landed me with is frankly cruel."

"Think on the bright side." Clint said. "At least I didn't blow anything up this time."

"No you just managed to hire a world-renown assassin. Somehow that requires even  _more_  paperwork which I didn't think was humanly possible." Phil muttered and as if to prove his point Clint heard some very distinct ruffling of pages in the background.

"Aww. Poor Phil." He cooed. "Missing your days in the action?"

"You know, you could help me," Phil suggested. "Seeing that her being here and my subsequent paperwork is all your fault."

"No can do." Clint said matter-of-fact-ly as he exited out onto his floor of the residential building. "Doctor said to take it easy for a few days. No strain what-so-ever."

"Paperwork is a strain, is it?" Phil deadpanned.

"No, but the constant desire to neck myself whilst doing it is a strain to resist." Clint smirked. "And besides, I do all the hard work around here anyway. All you have to do is document how cool I am."

"I am absolutely certain that none of the paperwork regarding your assignments say that." Phil continued dryly but without any real bite. The affection in his tone outweighed any grievances he might have really had. "The words 'insubordinate' and 'reckless' on the other hand make regular appearances."

"Same thing." Clint stated, coming to a halt in front of his room and placing his hand on the scanner that would unlock the door.

"Sure it is." Phil chuckled, not bothering to argue this time. "I better go get started.  _You_  rest."

"That is not going to be a problem." Clint emphasised heavily as he let himself into the room. He felt like he could sleep for a month. "Enjoy your paperwork – you're not fooling me, I know how much you secretly love documenting my epic escapades."

Phil didn't grace the comment with a reply before he hung up, but Clint did catch a mutter that sounded strangely like ' _Smartass_ '. He chuckled softly and threw the phone in the direction of the bed while he headed towards the room's adjoining bathroom.

The distinct thump of the phone hitting something other than a mattress caused him to pause in the doorway.

He glanced across to the bed to see that the phone had indeed not hit the mattress but something else that was already resting upon it. A small, square object that he was sure wasn't there when he left for Germany.

Curiosity got the best of him and he pulled away from the bathroom door and made his way to the bed. Looking at the small object more closely he realised it was nothing more than a rather thick looking black book that seemed to have been stuck together in a rush. Small pieces of not very well struck down paper were protruding from almost every side, as if the entire book was made of cut-and-pasted articles.

After picking the mysterious book up and prying open the first page Clint realized that he wasn't all that fair off, but instead of articles the small, protruding pieces of paper were photos - dozens of them.

Only the first page was uncluttered by the roughly stuck down images. Instead it featured only one sentence in Phil's unmistakable handwriting. One sentence that banished all previous thoughts of sleeping despite his earlier exhaustion.

_Just a few of the many people saved by Clinton Barton._

Clint didn't even noticed lowering himself down so that he was seated on the bed as he examined each, and every page of the small book. Each was filled with pictures and printed pieces of text – some from newspaper articles and others from S.H.I.E.L.D itself – describing who they were.

How Clint had altered their lives.

Some faces he recognised, like the two brothers on the third page who sat on the front steps of their home in Naples and looked no older than when Clint had last seen them after he assassinated a drug lord mere miles from those very steps, but most he had never seen in his life. Some pages didn't even feature individual people but entire towns such as the small village in Indian that Clint had visited just after coming to S.H.I.E.L.D where he and Phil had taken down a slave ring that had been kidnapping and selling the locals.

Clint wasn't sure how long he stared at the book – hours probably – but he couldn't drag his eyes away.

Didn't even want to.

He found himself gripping it so tightly that an onlooker might have thought it held its very salvation – and in a way it did.

Despite what he did now there was nothing he could ever do to make up for his past sins, and he still believed that no matter how many times Phil said that he deserved to be forgiven. To him no life saved could ever cancel out a life taken. The weight of those lives was never going to lessen no matter how much good he did now.

Clint believed that with his entire being, but he couldn't deny that as he flipped silently through the pages that that weight felt much more manageable than it had over the last few months.

It hadn't faded, not at all, but something in Clint as he stared at the last page of the book and the picture of himself and Phil that had been stuck down and scrawled upon with Phil's own writing, suddenly felt strong enough to bear that weight.

He recognised the picture immediately. A friendly waitress had taken it when he and Phil were last in Paris, at a cafe where he had broken the standing record of most crepes eaten in a minute. Phil wore an expression that was caught half way between astonishment and exasperation as he stared openly at Clint's chocolate covered face and the certificate he had won that was gripped proudly in Clint's also chocolate covered hands. They had had to bribe the waitress for the photo as they couldn't leave any evidence of their time in the city but Clint hadn't known what happened to it until now.

He should have known Phil would keep it, being the sentimental sap that he was. Underneath it were the final words of the book.

_Phil Coulson – saved from loneliness and boredom for the rest of his life._

Yep. Sentimental sap.

Typically Phil's determination that Clint experience the full range of human emotion and happiness was the bane of the archers very existence, but tonight Clint just couldn't bring himself to care.

Sap he may be, but Clint couldn't deny that no one had ever gone to the lengths that Phil continued to go to in order to make Clint's life a little bit better. And thanks him, and Clint's place at S.H.I.E.L.D, the last three years had been some of the best of his life.

And little did he know, the next few were to be the most interesting.

By far.

* * *

Natalia had been seated on the small, hard bed in her cell for hours now with her feet planted firmly on the floor. Every muscle, bone and square inch of her ached beyond belief but still she didn't move. Didn't flinch – hadn't stirred at all in the several hours since guards returned her to her cell.

The ache was familiar though.

The burning in her veins was a sensation she new all to well, and as it grew that ache in her body dwindled.

Her left side, which had been crushed in the car accident, was covered in dark bruises and deep cuts from the collision. Not to mention the several broken ribs and her arm that was still slightly out of place despite her best attempts to straighten it. S.H.I.E.L.D's doctors had been more than happy to keep their distance from her, and Natalia wasn't about to let them within ten feet of her despite how much she ached.

Her talk with the Director had gone about as well as she had imagined – in essence she had answered every question he had asked and he had scowled continually. From what she could tell, however, that wasn't all uncommon for him.

To her credit she had answered each and every question he had thrown at her with honesty. Or, at least, almost every question.

She had meant it when she told Agent Barton that she wanted to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. Wanted to be more than what she was before – and she was going to try.

She had to now.

She had promised.

 

" _If you fight, she will obliterate you."_

_A hand crashed through the car-door window and seized Natalia by the hair, using it to heave her forcefully from the car and onto the glass-strewn road. She didn't even bother attempting to crawl away, and not even a moment later those hands had seized her again only to lift her to her feet and throw her against the side of the car – keeping their hands tightly wrapped around her arms to keep her standing._

_It took a few seconds but eventually Natalia's eyesight stopped spinning, and despite the dim lighting she managed to focus on the familiar form that towered over her. Where Natalia was small and curvaceous, this woman was long and lithe with at least half a foot of height between them._

_The woman's long black hair hung loose, caught in the wind, but Natalia could still see her face. Make out her bright, ice blue eyes. Her thin lips. Lips that shifted as she watched and began to emit a low whistle. The sound echoed around them both and within seconds Natalia could feel her muscles seizing up. Her legs, which had been barely holding her weight as it was, went limp almost immediately and after a couple more seconds she was rendered completely at the mercy of the woman towering over her. But she didn't mind. Natalia had always known this was how it would end. Barton had been right. She couldn't run forever, not from the Red Room._

_Not from Devyat._

" _It's okay." Natalia whispered softly, her vocal cords protesting as they fought against the paralytic that had already taken over the rest of her body._

_The hands that grasped her didn't loosen – if anything they gripped a little tighter at her words – but the whistling faltered, just slightly, before fading altogether._

_Those ice-blue eyes stared down at Natalia with something that the Widow had never seen in them before. Uncertainty._

_Fear._

" _It's okay."_   _Natalia said again, grasping the hands that held her up with her own and staring into those eyes unfalteringly. "Of all of them, I'm glad it's you. Old friend," The words caused the woman's strong jaw to flex, but she didn't look away. Her shaking hands and clenched teeth were enough to tell Natalia how torn she was, but it wouldn't matter in the end._

_No one defies an execution order. Not even for a friend._

" _Just leave him." Natalia sighed, watching as the ice-blue eyes flickered downwards to where Barton was still trapped in the car. "Leave him and the case. I'd like to be able to say that I did at least one good thing in my life – spared one good life – I think I'm owed me that much." The blue eyes rose to meet Natalia's once more. "Let me have that much."_

_She didn't nod, or move at all, but that lack of action was all the answer that Natalia needed._

_She wouldn't touch him._

" _It's okay." Natalia repeated again, softly, nodding as she spoke. Accepting. "We both knew this was coming. Just make it fast, will you?"_

_The uncertainty in those blue eyes had grown to such a level that she looked almost pained by what she was about to do._

_But she had to do it._

" _Until next time, old friend." Natalia said with the smallest of accepting smiles and a quiet, dark, chuckle. "Maybe we'll share a pit down there."_

_For a moment there was silence. Neither of them moved, and neither of them spoke._

_And then she did._

_One of the hands grasping Natalia loosened and moved, more slowly than Natalia had ever seen her move, to rest upon Natalia's cheek._

" _No."_

_If she hadn't been standing less than a foot from her Natalia would have missed the word altogether, but before she could even begin to question it the woman pulled back and that same low whistle began to emanate from her lips. But it didn't stay a whistle. After a few seconds the sound became softer, more calming, and Natalia could feel her eyes starting to slip closed. She fought her lids though, confusion keeping her on the brink of consciousness as the woman pulled her away from the car and slammed them both down onto the hard road._

" _What are you doing?" Natalia groaned, not bothering to fight as the woman bent over her and tore open her shirt with a long, sharp blade._

" _Giving you a chance." She said before digging into Natalia's pockets and retrieving the bio-sensor that she had taken from the dead girl earlier. Using the sensor the woman traced along Natalia's side until she stopped suddenly, dropping the sensor and digging her blade into Natalia's side. The earlier, paralysing whistle and the calming melody had taken all feeling from Natalia's body and so as the woman sliced through her skin to the bone she felt nothing. There was only the vague awareness of bloody trickling steadily down her side and a tugging at one of her ribs._

_She heard the snap as it broke very clearly though._

_The woman leant back and Natalia's eyes settled on her bloody hands, widening slightly as she took in the severed rib that was gripped tightly in one them – or more specifically the small chip that was embedded in that rib._

_Her tracker._

' _Don't-" Natalia said, too late. "They'll kill you-"_

" _-It doesn't matter." The woman rushed tucking the rib away in one of the pockets of her black coat. "I'm already dead."_

" _Wha-" Natalia began, her confusion helping her fight the exhaustion and blood-loss, but the woman cut her off._

" _You were wrong – before – it's not okay." The woman said, leaning forwards so that her long, black hair fell over them both and their faces were mere inches apart. "We were children. We didn't deserve what they did to us. They ruined us, and we can't fix that, but we can make sure that they never do it to anyone, ever again." She rushed, eyes more wild than Natalia had ever seen them._

_More alive._

" _You can." She said vehemently. "You can burn them to the ground." She hissed. "You have a chance to be better, to fight against them with S.H.I.E.L.D behind you." Natalia could hear the civilians that had begun to gather around them but the woman above her seemed not to notice. "You can be better than what they made us." She implored, moving to grip Natalia's shoulders like she used to when they were children, and Natalia couldn't keep herself from nodding – if only slightly. She could do that._

_She would do that._

" _Until the next life, old friend." The woman whispered with one last tight-lipped smile that didn't reach her blue eyes._

_And then she was gone._

_Exhaustion and blood-loss was quickly winning out, Natalia's eye sight fading with each second, so her call came out with no more volume than a whisper rather than the shout she had intended._

" _Eva-"_

_No one answered._

 

Natalia rose from the cell room cot slowly and with great effort, taking careful steps until she could brace her hands on the small basin in the left corner of the cell. The water was freezing but soothing on her hands, and she used it to smooth the tangles that had become her blood-ridden hair before taking an uneasy step back and beginning to remove her shirt.

It was still the same, blood-soaked, shirt that she had been wearing for days despite that the guards had left S.H.I.E.L.D issue clothing for her in the cell when she returned from her interrogation with Fury. She had waited until the guard outside of her cell moved away to clean herself – keeping to the very corner of the cell to remain in the camera's blind spot – so that she could have some privacy.

It was not because she was shy in the slightest, but her wounds were likely to raise some questions that she had no intention of answering. Ever.

The shirt took some time to remove due to the blood that had set and glued it to her skin in some places, but eventually it came loose and she was able to throw it behind her and examine her torso in the mirror that hung above the basin.

The damage was as bad as she had imagined.

The blackening bruises across her left side were hideous but nothing compared to the mess that Eva had left behind from cutting out one of Natalia's ribs. The skin around the wound was bloody, what was left of the wound itself was black.

The skin and muscle that had been shredded mere hours ago had knitted back together and sealed over. The only remnants of the wound were the dark, black, veins that covered the quickly fading scars it had left – and even those scars would be gone in a few more hours. Soon all that would be left were the thick, black veins.

Natalia's eyes rose from her side to the mess of dark veins above her heart that had faded significantly, but were still slightly visible.

It was all that remained of the bullet that Lydia, the dead Red-Room agent, had fired from the rooftop of the S.H.I.E.L.D facility that both she and Agent Barton had infiltrated for the case.

A bullet that had passed straight through her heart and into Agent Barton as she had attempted to cover him – poisoning him with her blood.

Poisoning him with the seventh serum of Devyat that was currently coursing though her veins.

The only veins that could withstand it.

The slamming of a large, metal door nearby broke her from her dazed and she moved swiftly to seize the S.H.I.E.L.D issue sweatshirt they had left for her and pull it on painfully before a guard could make his way past her cell.

She had not lied to Fury. Not really. The serums  _were_  gory and cruel. Their host's barely human anymore.

She just hadn't felt the need to admit she was one of them.

That seven was  _her_  case. Her curse.

Hadn't been willing to take the risk.

The case would be well hidden here, passed from scientist to scientist who would each fail to open it, but it would be kept safe. Without her blood as a catalyst it couldn't be abused. Couldn't be replicated or manipulated in anyway. It would be kept a secret – after all, no one did secrets quite like Nickolas Fury. And in time what was left of the serum would fade from her system. The tainted, black veins would disperse and she'd be physically vulnerable again for the first time in over a decade.

She turned away from the mirror and moved to sit back on the cot in the centre of the cell once more. With her feet placed firmly on the ground, and eyes facing the stonewall it was as if she had never moved at all, and when the guard passed her by he didn't even spare her a second glance. And Natalia was determined to ensure that no one at S.H.I.E.L.D ever did.

Without that serum she could be truly human for the first time since she was a child. Could bleed.

Could die.

Could be better than what they made her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END!
> 
> …For now.
> 
> There will be a sequel!
> 
> Unfortunately though I do like for a story to be fully written and ready to go when I post so that I can update regularly, so as this is the case it may be a little while before I post the sequel but fear not….it is coming!
> 
> So please tell me what you think!
> 
> DID I SHOCK YOU?! Or had anyone guessed that Nat was a secret part of Devyat all along! 
> 
> And for those trying to guess the song for this story, it was 'Home' by Mumford and Sons, and is a GREAT song. The chapter titles are the lyrics so if you like them you should go and check it out! 
> 
> Let me know your thought! Like? Dislike? Why? Just generally angry or happy messages in general….I love to hear from you no matter what you're feeling!
> 
> Until we meet again in this wonderful realm named AO3, adieu!


End file.
